by Terry Mixon
Talbot gave her one final squeeze and then stepped back. “Let’s move the bodies into the cul-de-sac. We’ll load them onto their horses and dump them a couple of dozen meters inside the forest. Hopefully no one will discover them before we make our escape.”
Relocating the bodies was going to be a grisly task, but Kelsey threw herself into her work. Talbot was right that they couldn’t afford to become monsters, but she wasn’t going to lose much sleep about the indignities and unfairness of cutting down bastards like these. These men and women had chosen to butcher her unconscious people. They more than deserved what happened to them.
It looked like all of the pack horses were gathered in a clump—almost twice the number Julia had originally reported, which matched well with the idea two groups had merged. A couple of their people made sure that they didn’t run off. As soon as they’d taken care of the bodies and washed the blood off their new mounts—and themselves—they’d see about getting into the city.
Ready or not, it was time to confront the enemy in their lair.
32
Jared felt naked as he rode out into the cleared area around the horde city. They were now in plain sight of both the guards on the walls of the ominous place and the mounted patrols that circled it. They were now fully committed to this crazy plan because there would be no backing out.
Even though he was near the front of the caravan, he wouldn’t be doing the talking. He’d leave that to Beauchamp. She understood more about the horde than he did. She’d at least heard them speaking before and knew how to get the inflections right.
While everybody still spoke Standard, pronunciation of certain words had changed over time here on Terra. And on Avalon, too. The linguistic drift might kill them if someone got suspicious.
As a group, they’d discussed what they’d do if their ruse was discovered. As grim as it sounded, everyone had the means to make certain that they weren’t captured. They all had knives that they could use on themselves.
None of them wanted to commit suicide, but if the other option was torture and immolation, he’d slit his own throat without a second’s hesitation. The next few minutes were going to determine if that was necessary.
If their journey ended here, the New Terran Empire was doomed. Humanity itself was probably doomed. The AIs might have been satisfied with ruling over humanity before, but their development of the Omega Plague told him that they were now prepared to start eliminating their creators.
Beauchamp had gone over some basic ground rules of their behavior for this meeting. No one was to speak except her, unless directly spoken to. Even then, they were to keep their responses as brief and basic as possible.
Not that the woman expected the guards to question everyone. Based on what Julia and Beauchamp had seen, conversation was minimal. After all, what kind of idiot would try to sneak into the city right under their very noses.
His heart was pounding as the group approached the gate. None of the guards stationed in front of it or on the walls above seemed overly concerned at their approach.
Nor should they. A dozen people—even if they’d been trained warriors—would pose no threat to the city.
One of the guards standing in front of the gate stepped forward as they approached and raised his spear into the air, point first. “Hold. What news of the escaped prisoners?”
“We haven’t seen them,” Beauchamp said with a grimace. “If we had, you’d see them strung out behind us. Someone else will catch them. They won’t get away.”
The guard grinned at that. “True enough. Pass.”
Jared was starting to breathe a silent sigh of relief when that same guard narrowed his eyes and once again raised his spear.
“Hold.” He was looking directly at Kelsey. “Take off your helmet.”
Jared tensed. This was it.
The man looked her up and down once she’d removed her head cover, revealing the bruised and battered face she’d gotten when she’d been captured. He eyed her suspiciously for a moment, and then he smiled.
“How can a little thing like you be a warrior? Did you steal Daddy’s armor, little girl? Maybe you need a real man like me to show you how to use that sword and not get beaten up like that.”
His companions rumbled with laughter, and he visibly preened a little.
Kelsey slowly smiled in a way that made Jared’s blood run cold.
She edged her horse closer to the man and leaned over toward him. “That assumes you could even find the sheath with that short sword of yours. You look a little… clumsy.
“Oh, my mistake. That’s just a dagger with a dull edge. So, is that what this is? You’re looking for a real woman to sharpen that thing for you because your whetstone has grown worn from overuse and you think I have a firmer stroke than you? I hear that comes with age, old man.”
There was a brief moment of stunned silence before the guard’s companions roared in laughter. Many of them had doubled over, unable to contain their mirth.
The man’s face flushed a deep red as he scowled. “You have a saucy mouth, girl. Do you just use it to talk? Did you mouth off to the wrong man and he beat you like a drum?”
Kelsey gave him a disdainful sniff as she turned her horse to return to the formation. Her horse’s tail flipped almost dismissively.
“I set him on fire, so I think I came out ahead in the end. Shall I climb down so that we can compare blades? I promise not to look disappointed when you come up… short. After all, I’m sure it’s cute for its size.”
The guards roared again, and the man’s flush deepened even further.
“I’ll give you this, woman, you’ve got a quick tongue,” he ground out. “Get inside before I’m tempted to teach you some manners,” the guard said as he gestured with his spear for them to proceed. “And don’t be surprised if one day I make you call my name with that sassy mouth.”
“Keep dreaming, big man,” Kelsey said with a toothy grin as she rode past him. “Keep dreaming.”
The exchange had made Jared feel as if he was having a heart attack. Once they’d crossed through the gate and into the city itself, he motioned for Kelsey to ride up beside him. That was easier than trying to redirect his horse to meet hers.
“Have you lost your mind?” he demanded quietly as she fitted her helmet back on. “You deliberately provoked him.”
The corner of his sister’s mouth quirked up. “Once he’d singled me out, I didn’t have a choice. It would’ve been out of place for a warrior to take that kind of challenge without responding. Yes, I upped the provocation by mocking him that way, but trust me when I say that I had to. Anyone who has spent any time around the marines would know that.”
“She’s right,” Beauchamp said from his other side as they rode through the city, the sound of the shod hooves loud on the cobblestones beneath them. “I’m glad she reacted the way she did because no woman of the blade would allow that kind of talk about her without striking back. Not all combat is physical. Her silence would’ve raised their suspicion.”
She grinned at Kelsey. “And that was well said. I’ll have to remember that when I next need to put an uppity man in his place.”
Jared wanted to rub his face but that would’ve seemed out of place, so he just allowed himself a single sigh. Instead of responding, he looked at the buildings they were passing.
Most were made of wood, though some stone was used in their construction. They all looked primitive, but not because of the materials they’d used. He’d seen the Imperial Lodge where Kelsey had stayed for a while on Avalon once they’d put down Ethan’s regicidal insurrection. It was wood and stone but built by true craftsmen. These buildings were… sloppy.
He wondered if they’d built the structures themselves or used slave labor. There was no telling, and honestly, he didn’t even want to know at this point. Some things were best not thought about.
A much more pressing concern was where they were going. Wandering the streets would not serve their purposes. In fac
t, if they didn’t figure out where they needed to be very soon, someone was going to get suspicious, of that he was certain.
At the moment, they were on a wide street that led deeper into the city. The smaller, packed dirt alleys that led away from the cobblestones were narrow and seemed to only serve the areas just off the boulevard. That wouldn’t be where they were keeping anything valuable.
For the moment, he thought they were safe heading directly into the city. The powerful lived in the centers of such places, and that would be where these caravans were heading. The trick was going to be finding the right building, and then fooling whoever guarded it into thinking that he and his people had the right to go in.
Jared looked up at the sun with a hand shading his eyes and estimated that they had an hour and a half before dark. He had no idea what the city guards would do at that point, but he was willing to bet that everything would be locked down for the night. This seemed like the kind of place where they didn’t like the idea of random people wandering around in the dark.
At this pace, moving through the timid crowd that hurried to get out of their way, he estimated that they’d arrive at the city center in twenty or thirty minutes. If it took much longer than that to figure out their ultimate destination, they were going to end up fighting in the middle of a hostile populace with nowhere to go.
Jared gritted his teeth and gently used his heels to urge his horse to go just a little faster. He had to be careful because he didn’t want it breaking into a gallop, and he still wasn’t that good at controlling it, but every second counted. They had to get to the right place and get under cover, and they needed to do it right now.
Julia guided her horse along the cobblestone street almost on autopilot as she watched the crowd move around them. And it was definitely moving around them. The people looked terrified of her party, and that told her all she needed to know about how the horde treated its own people. The bastards that ran the horde were brutal.
She wished she had the ability to overthrow their regime but knew that that wasn’t in the cards. They’d be lucky to get out of the city with their skins intact. Her thirst for their blood wouldn’t be slaked today.
The crowd parted around them, rushing to be as far away from the horses as possible, and allowed the group deeper into the city at a fairly decent pace. Once they’d left the gate, the quality of the buildings began slowly improving. The rough wooden structures were replaced by stone, even though that was still just as slipshod as the buildings behind them.
With every block they traveled, the quality of the construction continued to improve until they were finally in an area that looked somewhat prosperous. The crowds had changed here as well. While they still had a fearful aspect to them, they didn’t seem to be completely terrified of her party.
This section of the city had a lot of shops, and the people around them were either conducting business or making things. The scents of hot metal, burning wood, and odd chemical smells seemed to dominate the air. Maybe this was where the horde merchant or service classes lived and worked.
Interestingly, there were carts here that were being used to move goods of some kind. They weren’t being pulled by horses, she noticed. Everything was human powered. That had to impede the ability to move large quantities of goods, so there had to be some kind of societal reason for it. Maybe the horses were reserved for the higher classes.
As they rode, they passed other warriors on horses. There were also some that patrolled on foot, but those seemed to be of a lower class than the ones on horses. It looked as if there were strata in the warrior class. She filed that information away as potentially useful.
On the other side of the merchant quarter, they entered a portion of the city that seemed to be much more finely designed and constructed. The streets were of higher quality, the cobblestones fitted more tightly together and easier to ride on. There were even horse-drawn carriages that moved people from place to place on their unknowable business.
The carriages were of very fine construction. The play of dark and light woods used, as well as the intricate carvings and bright painted surfaces, spoke of wealth. The drivers seated atop them dressed in bright clothes that seemed oddly designed to Julia. There had to be some kind of ceremonial aspect to that, as all of them dressed in a similar manner.
The buildings they traveled between were imposingly tall and extremely well-built. Where wood was used, it was planed down to flat surfaces, sanded to smoothness, and then painted in bright colors. If there was stone—which most buildings here used stone in parts of their construction—it was shaped and smoothed to be aesthetically pleasing as well.
Definitely a high-class neighborhood.
She was still admiring some of the houses—though in many cases the word “house” seemed trivial when used for the buildings in question—when she saw another group of horsemen approaching them from directly ahead.
There were warriors, but there were also pack animals. The packs were noticeably empty.
This group looked like the same kind of caravan that they were pretending to be. Perhaps these people had already been to the repository of the stolen gear. If so, she and her companions were definitely headed in the right direction.
She hoped the others passed by without trying to converse but wasn’t shocked when one of the horsemen edged over and changed direction to ride directly beside her. He was examining her armor, and he had a slight frown on his face.
“Your armor is very well constructed, but it’s made for a man,” he said, his frown deepening. “Why don’t you have one more fitted to your form?”
That sounded like a personal question, but she wasn’t sure she should challenge him like Kelsey had the guard. That had been insane. She should probably just answer the question.
Sadly, it was one that she hadn’t been prepared to answer. She’d hadn’t considered that there might be different styles of armor for men and women.
There had to be, she belatedly realized. While she wasn’t well-endowed, other women were. Lieutenant Laird, for example had a generous bosom. So did Commander Cannon. Their armor—which they’d probably salvaged from dead women—must have a more expansive chest segment to allow for that, so they could be protected yet comfortable.
She’d gotten hers from a small man because her options at the time had been limited but hadn’t realized there was a difference in construction for gender. Now she might have gotten them all killed because of her ignorance.
For a couple of seconds, her brain ran in every direction searching for anything that she could say that would make sense and seem innocent. Then the perfect answer struck her. In fact, it was so perfect that she had to resist the urge to smile.
She shrugged her shoulders at the man. “These are my brother’s hand-me-downs. You know how it is, the first son always gets the good stuff. I suppose I’m lucky to have this. One day—maybe soon now—I’ll buy my own gear.”
At her words, the man slowly nodded. “I hadn’t realized that happened across gender lines, but I’ve done the same thing for my younger brothers.”
He examined her torso closely, likely trying to imagine how small-breasted she had to be to fit into such tight confines. There was nothing sexual in his gaze, just cold-eyed professional curiosity.
She was glad the warrior couldn’t see the weapons she’d taken from the dead man whose armor she wore. The fine steel blades were safely in their scabbards, and her bow was on her back. Those were definitely not hand-me-downs.
Julia turned slightly in the saddle so that her torso obscured the bow a little better. It’s exquisite artistry might catch the man’s attention.
He started to say something else, but someone from his own group shouted at him to hurry up. The man shot an irked glare back at his group but did pull away and start after them.
“Once you drop off your cargo, do me the honor of joining me at the Tavern of the Elk. I’m there most evenings. I’d like to learn more about you, and I believe I
can recommend an armorer that can help you.”
His tone indicated that he was giving her an instruction rather than requesting she do as he asked. He was someone with natural authority. She wondered who he was in this society.
Without waiting for a response from her, the man hurried after his fellows, leaving Julia and her party blissfully alone.
She wondered if her armor implied that she was of a lesser social standing than him or if he was a higher-ranking member of whatever they called their horsemen. If something on the armor indicated rank, she didn’t know what it was.
Thankfully, she had no intention of ever seeing the man again, so it wouldn’t matter. Whether he had been hitting on her or giving her an order that he expected her to obey, he was going to be sorely disappointed when she not only didn’t show but turned out to be one of the people that had escaped their clutches.
That complication dealt with, she focused on where they were going. They just had to find the holding place for all the captured gear and deal with whoever was guarding it. Somehow. And they had to do it fast.
33
Talbot grew more antsy the closer they got to the center of the city. The number of guards around them had been steadily increasing over the last few minutes, and it now seemed as if they were everywhere. They outnumbered the civilians in their now opulent clothing by a significant amount. That meant they dwarfed his party’s numbers.
Off in the distance, a larger structure rose above the buildings around it. He’d seen pictures in books on various planets of the Old Terran Empire. Kelsey loved reading about that kind of thing and always had a few printed up from the ship’s library in their quarters. What he was looking at was a castle.
Most of those structures in the Old Empire were recreations of what had existed on Terra back in the prespaceflight days, but the building in front of him, though similarly constructed, had a brooding, brutal look about it. It wasn’t just for show. It was a working edifice meant to stand off a determined attack. It looked strong enough to even survive some advanced weapons.
