The archers kept up their steady attack; arrows sang in the air, nipping off a hail of twigs around him, thudding into the trees he sheltered behind. There was no sign of Seregil except a third track snaking off through the snow into the trees beyond Micum. Left more or less on his own, Alec knew what his next step had to be.
His heart pounded sickeningly as he fitted an arrow to the string and took aim at a man for the first time in his life. A tall archer standing boldly at the edge of the road presented an easy target, but try as he might, Alec couldn’t seem to hold steady. Startled by a horse’s scream, he released the shaft high and it sped off uselessly into the trees. Micum’s gelding drove itself into a heap just in front of him, a shaft protruding from its throat. Another arrow slammed into the beast’s chest and it gave a final bellowing groan.
“The bastards know their business, killing the horses,” Micum called over to him. “I hope you have a few shafts left—I’m pinned down here!”
Nocking a second arrow, Alec drew the fletching to his ear and tried again.
“O Dalna!” he whispered as his bow arm wavered again. “Let me pull true!”
Damn, he can’t do it, Micum thought in alarm, watching Alec’s face.
Before he could decide how to get across to help him, however, a bandit with a sword rushed him from the trees. Silently commending Alec to whatever gods he had, Micum turned to meet the attack.
It was his habit to look into his opponent’s eyes as he fought; in this scarred, swarthy face he read no fear. Their swords rang out a steady, grim music as each, conscious of the uncertain footing beneath the snow, tried to draw the other into a clumsy misstep. Suddenly Micum saw the man’s gaze flicker to the left. Jumping aside, he faced the second swordsman before the man had time to swing at his back. Thinking Micum had off-balanced himself, the first man overextended a lunge and Micum’s blade took him under the ribs.
Even as he jerked the blade free, he caught movement put of the corner of his eye and barely avoided a slicing cut at his shoulder from a third swordsman. Drawing a long dagger with his left hand, Micum moved back, trying to keep them both in front of him. These two were younger, less sure of themselves than the first, but they knew their trade. Learing like wolves, they stayed wide apart, making it difficult to defend from both at once. One would cut at him to draw a parry, while the other tried to hamstring him on his open side. But Micum had been in too many fights like this to be drawn. Using his sword and dagger, he managed to fend off their attacks and return a few thrusts of his own.
Pinking one of them on the arm, he said easily, “I think it’s only fair to tell you that my purse is far too light for you to go to such trouble to take it.” His attackers exchanged a quick glance but made no reply, grimly pressing to break his guard.
“Suit yourselves, then.”
The man to his right feinted forward strongly, managing to nick Micum on the ribs just deeply enough to make him regret leaving his mail shirt behind in Wolde. Springing back, however, the man missed his footing in the churned snow and staggered. Micum killed him before he’d regained his balance and was just turning to address his final opponent when a sharp blow from behind knocked him to his knees. Looking down, he found a bloody arrowhead protruding from the front of his leather shirt just beneath his right arm. The two swordsmen, unable to break through his defense, had managed to push him out onto the road and into the archers’ range.
Serves me right for not paying attention, he thought angrily, seeing the final stroke coming down. Before it could, though, the bravo fell backward with a red-fletched arrow squarely through his chest.
Ducking for cover again, Micum looked across the road. Alec knelt behind the dead horse, returning the archers’ shots with a singing volley of his own. Two lay dead already, and another dropped as Micum watched.
“By the Flame,” Micum gasped. “By the Flame!”
• • •
Seregil disappeared into the forest at the first sign of ambush. Making a wide circuit, he outflanked three swordsmen headed in Alec’s direction and then worked his way into their path, concealing himself behind a fallen tree until they came abreast of him. When all three had passed, he jumped out and swung at the hindmost, killing him with a slash across the back of the neck. The second man turned in time to catch Seregil’s blade in the throat.
Unfortunately, the third man—a great, heavyset villain armed with a broadsword—had ample time to face him. He caught Seregil’s first blow at midblade, throwing it back in an attempt to wrench it free. Seregil maintained his grip, but the force of the blow sent an unpleasant shock up his arm. He considered a timely retreat into the woods, but the snow was too deep for sprinting. Springing back a pace, he sized up his opponent.
Evidently the other man was doing the same; he gestured derisively at the slender blade Seregil carried, spat into the snow, then launched a mighty swing at his head. Hoping for the best, Seregil pulled a dagger and ducked under the blade, throwing himself at his adversary’s knees. The unexpected move caught the man off guard just long enough for Seregil to bury the knife in his thigh. With a bellow of pain, the man tumbled backward, dragging Seregil with him, and immediately rolled to pin him.
Caught face down under the larger man’s bulk, Seregil choked on the powdery snow. Try as he might, he couldn’t break free. Then the weight shifted and cold, callused hands were around his throat, cutting off his wind and shaking him like a rat. Summoning all his will, he managed to draw up his leg to reach his boot top. A sizzling haze of stars swam before his eyes, but practiced fingers found the grip of his poniard. With the last of his strength, he drove it back between his assailant’s ribs.
The big man let out a startled grunt, then crumpled over on top of him, still pinning him. down. Gasping for air, Seregil heaved the body aside and staggered to his feet.
“Illior’s merciful today,” he panted, bending to make certain the man was dead.
Something buzzed past his head like an angry wasp and he flung himself down, pulling his poniard free of the body. But it was Alec, another arrow ready on the string, who stepped from the trees. The boy’s left thigh was bloody and he looked decidedly pale. Micum Cavish was with him, holding a bloodstained wad of cloth against his side.
“Behind you.” Micum nodded past Seregil’s shoulder.
Turning, Seregil found another ambusher sprawled dead in the snow not four feet from his back, a red-feathered arrow through his throat.
“Well,” he gasped, standing up to brush off the snow, “I believe you just repaid me for that bow.”
“By Sakor, this child can shoot!” Micum grinned. “He just put me in his debt back at the road, then picked off two more as easy as you please. I saw another take off through the trees when Alec was coming over to tend me.”
“Damn,” Seregil muttered as he collected his weapons and searched the dead men scattered around. “Get your arrow from that one, Alec.”
Alec approached the dead man and gingerly tugged on the shaft protruding from his neck. As he pulled it free, the man’s head rolled to the side, his open eyes seeming to fix on his killer. Alec backed away from him with a shudder, carefully wiping the arrowhead in the snow before dropping it into his quiver.
Back at the road they gathered the other bodies into a heap. Alec pulled the arrow from the first man he’d shot, but before he could clean it, Micum took it from him.
“That was your first man, wasn’t it?” he asked.
“Micum, it’s not his way,” Seregil warned, knowing what his friend was up to.
“It’s best to do these things proper,” Micum replied quietly. “I did it for you, remember? It’s you should be doing it for him.”
“No, it’s your ritual,” Seregil sighed, slouching against a tree. “Go ahead, then. Get it over with.”
“Come here, Alec. Stand facing me.” Micum was uncommonly serious as he held up the arrow. “There’s a twofold purpose in this. The old ways, the soldier ways, say that if you drink
the blood of your first man, none of the others you ever kill will be able to haunt you. Open your mouth.”
Alec shot a questioning look to Seregil, who only shrugged and looked away. Under Micum’s commanding gaze, Alec opened his mouth. Micum laid the arrowhead briefly against his tongue, then withdrew it.
Seregil saw the boy grimace, remembered the salt and copper taste that had flooded his own mouth years before when Micum had done the same with him. His stomach stirred uneasily.
When it was over, Micum patted Alec’s shoulder. “I know you didn’t enjoy that much, any more than you enjoyed killing those fellows. Just remember that you did it to protect yourself and your friends, and that’s a good thing, the only good reason to kill. But don’t ever get so that you like it, any more than you liked the taste of the blood. You understand that?”
Alec looked down at the steaming crimson stains spreading out from the bodies in the snow and nodded.
“I understand.”
7
SOUTH TO BOERSBY
In spite of his wound, Micum agreed with Seregil that they should bolt through as quickly as possible to Boersby. Giving wide berth to the few steadings and inns that lay along the road, they kept up a steady pace for as long as Micum could stay in the saddle, slept in the open, and ate whatever Alec shot.
Micum’s wound didn’t fester, but it was giving him more pain than he cared to admit. More aggravating still, however, was Seregil’s increasing silence during the day and a half it took to reach the banks of the Folcwine. From past experience, Micum recognized this as a sure sign that something was amiss; Seregil’s black mood could go on indefinitely if something didn’t happen to shake him out of it.
They rode out of the forest at late afternoon and sat looking out over the broad course of the Folcwine. Micum was bleeding again, and it left him faint and irritable.
“Bilairy’s Guts, Seregil, come out with it before I knock you down!” he growled at last.
Scowling down at his horse’s neck, Seregil muttered, “I wish we’d taken just one of them alive.”
“One of—oh, hell, man! Are you still brooding about that?” Micum turned to Alec. “A nest of forest bandits—hardly a rarity in the Folcwine—surprises him, and instantly there’s some dark plot afoot. I think he’s just piqued that he didn’t hear them coming.”
Alec looked down at his hands, apparently finding it politic not to comment.
“All right, then.” Seregil turned in the saddle to face Micum. “We searched the bodies. What did we find?”
“Nothing out of the ordinary,” Micum snapped. “Not one solitary thing!”
“That’s right. But think again, what did they have?”
Micum snorted with exasperation. “Cloaks, boots, belts, tunics, all local stuff.”
“Swords and bows,” Alec ventured.
“Locally made?”
“The bows were. I don’t know about the swords.”
“Looked to be,” Micum said slowly, thinking back. “But what in the name of all—”
“Everything was new!” Seregil exclaimed, as if they should immediately understand. “Did they have gold, jewelry, fancy clothes?” he demanded. “Not a scrap! A little silver in their purses, but not so much as a luck charm or knucklebone otherwise. So what we’re left with is a gang of ruffians in new local clothing, carrying new local weapons, who are either so inept at their trade or of such austere temperament that they forgo any of the usual adornments.”
With that he sat glowering at the others, thin mouth twisted in an exasperated grimace.
He looks like a filthy young lordling berating dim-witted servants, thought Micum, again resisting the temptation to knock his friend off his horse.
Alec suddenly straightened in his saddle. “They weren’t bandits at all. They were just rigged out to look like it!”
Seregil’s features relaxed into something like a smile for the first time that day. “But more than that, they were foreign to the area. Otherwise, they’d have had no need to buy everything new.”
“When we searched the bodies there weren’t any guild marks, were there?” asked Alec. “You know, like that Juggler at Asengai’s?”
“No, at least none that I recognized. But that may not be significant in itself.”
Micum smiled to himself, watching them go over the details of the ambush again like two hounds on a fresh scent. The boy was hooked for certain.
“So who are they?” he broke in at last. “Plenimarans? Even if they tracked us, which I doubt, how could they get far enough ahead of us to set up an ambush?”
“I don’t think they could,” said Seregil. “These fellows were already in place, waiting for us.”
Micum stroked down the corners of his heavy mustache. “But that still means they’d have to have gotten word of who we were and which way we were coming.”
“That’s right,” Seregil agreed. “It could have been by magic, or pigeon. In any case, it means there’s a good deal more afoot here than we thought. All the more reason for staying off the main roads and getting to Skala as soon as possible. Time may be shorter than we think.”
“If the Overlord’s forces—” Micum began, but Seregil cut him short with a quick glance toward Alec.
“Sorry, Alec,” he said, “we trust you well enough, but we answer to others in this matter. It’s probably safer this way anyhow.”
Seregil looked up at the lowering clouds. “We’re losing the light fast, but we’re too close to town for me to spend another night outside. What do you say, Micum? Are you well enough to press on?”
“Let’s press on. You’ve got contacts there, don’t you?”
“At the Tipsy Frog. We’ll stay the night there.”
The lamps were lit by the time they reached the town.
Unlike Wolde, Boersby was a rough and ragged wayside town consisting almost entirely of establishments catering to the traders. Jumbled together at the water’s edge like thirsty cattle, inns, taverns, and warehouses competed for frontage with the long docks stretching out into the river.
With winter coming on, the town was crowded with the last rush of traders trying to make a profit before the roads closed until spring.
Seregil led the way to a dubious-looking hostelry at the edge of town. The battered signboard over the door displayed a bilious green creature—no doubt intended by the artist to be a frog—draining a hogshead.
A sizable crowd milled about in the dim confines of the main room, hollering back and forth and pounding on tables for service. A fire smoldered on the large hearth, filling the room with an eye-stinging haze. A heavy plank laid across two barrels served as the bar, and behind it stood a lean, pasty-faced man in a leather apron.
“Any rooms?” Seregil inquired, giving the taverner a discreet hand sign.
“Only got one left at the back, nothin’ fancy,” the taverner replied with a quick wink. “One silver penny per night, in advance.”
With a curt nod Seregil tossed a few coins on the bar. “Send up some food—whatever you’ve got and lots of it—and water. We’re just off the trail and hungry as wolves.”
The room was hardly more than a lean- to built onto the back of the tavern. A sagging bedstead against the far wall, its linen hinting broadly of previous lodgers, was the only furnishing. A scruffy lad appeared a moment later with a candle stand and a covered firepot, closely followed by another with a platter of roast pork and turnips, and pitchers of ale and water.
A soft knock came at the door as they were eating. It was the landlord this time. Without a word, he handed Seregil a bundle and left.
“Come along, Alec,” said Seregil, tucking it under his arm. “Bring the pack. There’s a bathhouse next door and I could do with a wash. What about you, Micum?”
“Good idea. I doubt I could stand the three of us in a closed room tonight.” He rubbed a hand ruefully through the thick, coppery stubble on his cheeks. “I could do with a good shave, as well, not that either of you would unders
tand!”
The bathhouse was a drafty establishment. After some determined haggling with the woman who owned it, Seregil saw to it that the two splintery wooden tubs the place boasted of were emptied of their murky contents and refilled with clean water. For an additional fee she heated two buckets of water to take off the chill. As they stripped down, she brought in towels and coarse yellow soap, then took their clothes away to be washed. No stranger to naked customers, she greeted Alec’s hot-cheeked discomfort with open disdain.
“You’ve got to get over that, you know,” Seregil remarked as he and Micum settled in their tubs.
“What?” Alec huddled closer to the room’s tiny fire, waiting his turn.
“This modesty of yours. Or at least the blushing part.”
Micum sank back with a sigh, letting the tepid water soften the crusted blood around his wound. Seregil scrubbed himself quickly head to foot and climbed out again.
“All yours, Alec. Use the soap and have a care for your nails. I’ve a notion to elevate our station in life by tomorrow.” He was shivering as he scrubbed the ragged towel over his hair and shoulders. “Illior’s Hands!” he grumbled. “I swear when I get back to Rhíminee I’m going to head for the nearest civilized bath and stay there a week!”
“I’ve seen him fight through fire, blood, starvation, and magic,” Micum remarked, speaking to nobody in particular, “but deny him a hot bath at the end of it and he fusses like a kept whore.”
“A lot you’d know about that.” Unrolling his bundle, Seregil shook out a coarse woolen dress and pulled it on over his head.
Alec gaped in astonishment, and Seregil give him a wink. “Time for another lesson, I think.”
He quickly plaited his hair back into a loose braid and pulled a few strands free to hang untidily around his face. Greyish powder from small pouch dulled his hair and skin. Unwrapping the rest of the bundle, he pulled out a huge striped shawl, battered wooden clogs, and a leather girdle. Satisfied with his work, he tucked the smallest of his daggers out of sight under his belt and turned away for a moment, rearranging his body beneath the loose gown to give the impression of the stooped frailty of age. When he turned back again, Alec and Micum saw an unremarkable little servant woman.
Luck in the Shadows Page 11
