by Henry Thomas
The horns were louder now, and they were not coming from the ranks; they surrounded Joth, and he couldn’t quite tell if they were coming from outside or inside the village. He barely had time to raise his sword and avoid running his comrade through as the rank in front of him fell back and crashed into his. The ranks behind him were surging forward now and the whole formation was wheeling right, but Joth never heard the order. He could not hear much at all but rain on his helm and the confusion of the men next to him as he found himself spun around and slipping in the muddy footing of the village sty. It was Wat who lifted him up.
“What’s bloody happening, Wat?”
“They’re on us, that’s what! Stand!” Wat was looking around furtively.
“Where?”
“Stand and move, damn you! I know as much as you!”
There was a flurry of movement in the ranks on Joth’s left as the enemy appeared and flung their darts into the massed and broken formation. There were more than two hundred of the bloody javelineers. Joth had never seen so many tribesmen at once. Scores of javelins were bristling in the men of the front ranks and many of them fell in the mud pierced through by a dozen or more. A cry went up all around the village, terrifying the Oestermen.
Joth surged forward to overtake the fallen men of the front ranks when the cavalry hit the company from the rear. Wat was next to him, shouting, “Form ranks, damn you!” But the company was being hit on all sides as more fighting men from the tribes surged out with spears and swords from within the huts of the village. The morale that had been teetering on the brink for a week or more among the Oestermen came crashing down in an all-out panic as knots of men tried to flee for their lives, desperate to get clear of the ambush. It broke in an instant, and Joth found himself running with Wat and a score of others past a low round hut and out of the village center. A dart careened off the helm of the man next to him and sent him sprawling into the mud, but Joth didn’t stop running to look back. He and Wat had almost made the treeline. It was very close now that they had gotten clear of the last hovel and broken into a run over a fallow field. A man was crying close behind him, screaming “Horses! Horses!” Only then did Joth whip his head down and under his arm out of habit to allow himself an uninhibited view behind through the ocular in his helm. He was lucky that he did, he realized, as a mounted man sailed past him and he managed to miss getting lanced by a hair’s breadth. He was raising his blade to defend himself when the rider’s foot sent him down into the wet grass and he lost his wind. He rolled and had his feet in an instant, but he could not get air into his lungs and the strength in his legs was leaving him. He had to kneel for a moment.
I’ll die here in the bloody tribe lands, he thought. I’m going to die here.
He looked around and saw Wat speared through the back just a few yards off. He was still crawling for the trees with a foot and a half of broken shaft sticking out of him, his dirty jack brightened with a growing patch of red around his wound. The horses were wheeling back, the tribesmen calling to each other and laughing as they cut down the Oestermen who had fled with him and Wat.
I’ve got to get to Wat, Joth thought. We can make the trees. I’ve got to help him.
Forcing himself onto his feet and gulping down air, he broke into as near a run as he could manage and got his arm under Wat, half carrying, half dragging him to the trees. Bloody hell, he was a big man, but Joth was strong. Wat groaned as they hit the edge of the wood, telling Joth to let him go, but Joth kept pulling him and telling him they would make it. “Just a bit farther and we’ll lose them, Wat!” he said, dragging the wounded man up the densely wooded hill. He could hear the enemy crashing through the woods behind them, all traces of subtlety and silence gone now, like hounds that were close to the kill with their blood up. The trees and brush here were too dense to ride through, their pursuers would have to dismount, and he knew that would buy them some time.
Joth was beginning to feel the hopelessness of his flight drag his will down to the breaking point, but he steeled himself and told himself that he would keep fighting, that he had to. He reached down almost without thinking and pulled the spear head out of Wat’s back, tossing it down the hill behind him as the big man screamed a curse at him.
“You’ll move easier now,” he said.
“You bloody fool, I need to staunch the bleeding now.” Wat’s jaw was clenched so tight and his breathing so labored that Joth could barely make out the words. More horns sounded from the village, and the sound of their pursuers subsided for a moment.
They’re being called back, Joth knew, a glimmer of hope in a shared look between him and Wat. A nod between them and the wounded man drew a deep breath and pushed himself to his feet unsteadily. Wat was shaky, but they’d make the top of the hill faster this way. The hill was getting steeper now as they climbed and pulled their way through holly stands and knotty oaks, using the trees for handholds and finding footholds in the rocky earth. They were moving quickly, but Wat’s jack was wet with blood and it dripped down his sleeve and onto anything he touched as he clambered. His face was ashen and his eyes were wide and staying fixed on things long enough to cause him to stumble.
Wat was fading.
“Just there, Wat. Over this rock and we will rest on the other side for a moment.”
Wat looked as if he were going to argue but he just nodd-ed grimly.
It was really more of a rocky seam in the earth that the roots of an ancient oak had cracked and pushed through as it sought its way slowly to the depths of the hillside, through centuries perhaps. Joth did not know how old the tree was, nor did he especially care about it, but he was glad to find that on the other side of the root gnarled rock there was a small outcrop that they could shelter under and, more importantly, he could face someone without being surrounded and ridden down. They’ll have to drag us out of here like a badger from its den, he thought. It didn’t pay to think past that point, he knew.
Not with Wat’s blood all over the hillside.
The horn sounded again from the village. He and Wat settled into the hollow and Joth climbed onto the old oak’s roots and peered over the top of the outcrop and down the hillside. About halfway down the hill he could see a young warrior standing there, peering up toward him, scanning the hill for movement. Joth stood stock still, and held his breath.
The warrior was tall for a tribesman, maybe even as tall as Joth. Oestermen were tall. In the fashion of his people, the warrior’s dark hair was hung with a few golden ornaments and braided back away from his beardless face. He looked young, but Joth knew in the tribes you were a man after fourteen winters. Wat had told him that.
The youth was holding something, turning it over in his hand. The broken spear, Joth realized. He kept scanning the hill like a hunter waiting for movement, some sight of his quarry. A voice carried up the hill from below. Joth could only watch as the young warrior called back, and though he could not understand the words they spoke, he understood the tone, and it was one of frustration. He wants to finish me and Wat, Joth thought, finish us here and now while the trail is fresh and he could be done with it, this young warrior.
The youth stood staring for a beat longer, then yelled out what Joth could only imagine was some sort of curse to the hillside, and throwing the broken spear down he turned and made his way down the hill toward the village. As he turned Joth sank back down and breathed again deeply. The sky had thundered and raged as they had made their way up the hill, and now it began to rain in earnest, heavy raindrops beating out a rhythm through the branches of the trees, water sheeting off of the rocky outcrop he and Wat sheltered beneath.
They sat without moving for a long time.
“Help me get this off.” It was Wat fumbling with his jack lacings.
“Put your hands down, I’ll do it.”
The jacks they wore were made to stop arrows and turn a sword blow. Made from a score of layered linen
canvas with a stag’s skin sandwiched somewhere inside and stitched through to form a near impenetrable half-sleeved coat that was then waxed on its outer layer to make it weatherproof, the jack was lighter than coat armor and cheap enough for the poorest soldier to obtain. You could tell how long a man had campaigned by how broken in his jack was. Wat’s was as supple a jack as Joth had ever seen, and the filthiest as well. As he worked the laces free he had to wrinkle his nose at the rank smell.
“Sit up a bit, Wat. Let’s pull this off you.”
The big man groaned as Joth wriggled the coat free. Wat sat there leaning forward, his singlet soaked through with blood and sweat and grime.
The wound wasn’t as bad as Joth had imagined it to be. Wat had been pierced under his shoulder blade and he probably had a broken rib or two. The filthy reeking jack had saved Wat’s life, but he was still bleeding like a stuck pig and Joth needed a fire and a hot iron to stop that.
“We can’t risk a fire this close to them,” Wat wheezed.
“You’ll bleed to death.”
“It’s pissing rain out. How could you anyhow?”
“There’s some tinder here, look.”
“Yer a bloody fool if you think they won’t be on us before the rain stops.”
“The rain’ll hide the smell and the smoke, and we’ll put it out quick.”
Wat didn’t look convinced.
“I’ll use your jack to tent it.”
Wat sighed and gave the slightest of nods.
“You’ll get us both killed, but I don’t have the strength to stop you. Bloody fool, Joth.” They shared a grim smile, and laughed in spite of themselves.
“Shhh…they’ll hear us!” Wat hissed, but this only illicited more laughter. They were safe now, even if their safety was precarious and fleeting and doomed. They had escaped for the moment, and now the elation of being alive had given them a grim hope. It felt good to laugh. Joth could almost forget he wasn’t back in the barracks at the garrison. He could almost forget Lord Uhlmet and the hellish mess of the last few weeks’ march. The faces of his lost comrades came floating up at him and his mirth slowly died, and he knew Wat was thinking the same. He removed his own jack and covered Wat with it to stop his shivering, for the rain had brought with it a chill and Wat was weak from his wound.
“I’ll be quick about this.”
He set about making the fire. Everything was so damp that it seemed nigh impossible to accomplish, but Joth kept trying to coax a spark to life within the tinder. The first few died as they fell through the air. Twice he caught a spark in the dry bark nest he had made, but as he tried to breath life into them the sparks faded and lost their fiery glow, failing into black specks within the nest of tinder. When he had almost given up, a hearty strike sent a brilliant spark arcing into the stringy bark and it held there, glowing. Slowly, steadily, he blew into the spark and watched it flare and smoke, gaining strength from his breath and finally bursting into flame. Carefully he added the small twigs he had gathered from under the outcrop, then some larger sticks, and finally a large piece of dried dead wood he had scavenged from the base of the ancient tree.
Once the flames had quickened, Joth made a tent over the fire with the blood soaked jack he had peeled from Wat. He then fanned the smoke with his hands, wafting out into the rainy sky. Wat coughed and cursed. Shivering and wearing his singlet and hosen, Joth removed his helm and used it to try to spread the smoke out a bit, hoping that he had not just alerted their enemies to their whereabouts. He met with mixed results. But by the time he felt the smoke had dissipated enough, his teeth were chattering and his singlet was soaked through, his ash blonde hair a murky brown and plastered to his head. He retreated once again under the outcrop once he had checked the bottom of the hill and found no signs of any watchers.
The flames had grown and consumed the smaller sticks, turning them to glowing coals, burning with a pale blue fire that licked at the larger pieces of wood stacked carefully atop them. Joth had built the fire well, and she would burn for quite a while if they needed her to. He took the half-moon shaped fire striker that he had used to start the blaze and placed it carefully in the coals where the heart of the fire was burning the deepest red and waited for his steel to get hot. Wat cried out as Joth pulled the blood-soaked singlet down to expose the gaping wound. He helped Wat have a drink of water from his cupped hands and then washed out his wound with the rainwater.
“This is going to bloody hurt, Joth.”
“Don’t cry out.” He gave Wat his own belt knife and placed the bone handle between his teeth.
Wat clamped down on the knife, set his jaw and nodded. He was as ready as he could be given the sorry situation they were both in now. Joth gave a grim nod and turned back to the fire.
The steel striker had gone black and the edge was glowing a dull orange where it lay touching the burning coals. Joth levered the smoking metal up with a stick and got the edge of Wat’s jack under it, using it like a potholder to protect his hand. The metal sizzled and spat when it touched the wet filthy cloth. It was clumsy at best. He dropped it several times before he managed to fully remove it from the coals, but at last he held it firmly and turned back to Wat.
“Do it,” Wat said with the knife in his teeth.
Joth held his eyes for a beat, then nodded grimly.
It was over in an instant. The scream that Wat released died in a whimper, but Joth couldn’t tell if anyone would have been able to hear anything over the rain. He would not have believed three days ago that he would be thanking the heavens for spitting on him now, but he was thanking them with all his might. “Don’t move, Wat. Let me have a look at you.”
There was an angry crescent-shaped mark burned over the wound on Wat’s back. He had cauterized it fairly well considering that he wasn’t a barber, and only the edges of the wound still bled. If it didn’t fester and Wat could rest for a time, he might survive. If they didn’t get speared again trying to escape the bloody tribe lands, he thought gloomily. He made a crude bandage out of a piece of wadding he cut from Wat’s helmet lining and tied it in place with his scarf, then carefully arranged the bloody singlet so that the entire bandage was secure beneath it. It was not the best, but it was the best he could do for his comrade. “Rest now. I’ll put out the fire and have a look down the hill.”
Wat grunted and closed his eyes.
After he had smothered their fire with the earth and soaked the smoldering mound with a helmet full of rain, Joth ate a piece of hard tack from his ration sack and chewed on a hard biscuit that left his mouth dry and his jaw sore. The rainwater tasted fair enough, but what he really longed for was a flagon of ale to calm him and warm him up. May as well piss in my hand and wish it were ale, he thought, I’ll be lucky to ever see another flagon again. As far as he could reckon, he and Wat were at least a week’s march from the Oestern borderlands. Wat would never make it in his state, Joth mused. The circuitous route they had taken with their company under Lord Uhlmet had led them out of their barracks at Castle Immerdale in the east and across the Dalemoors on the Magister’s Road for an easy two days’ ride west by northwest until they had come to the Borderhills. There they had left the road and turned due west, riding through the low hills for three days before coming to a magnificent vale no one seemed to know the name of, at which point he realized they were in Dawn Tribe territory.
Technically the border was somewhat disputed, but the topography granted a natural border that no one could deny, a deep vale with hills on the Oestern side and mountain walls on the other. The company followed the vale south on horseback for three more days until reaching Rhael’s Pass, and they crossed it in a day and a night. Then had come the first settlement, and with it the beginning of their woes. Their horses had all been stolen that night, all save one. Joth still wondered why they had left one bloody horse for Lord Uhlmet. He supposed it was some Dawn Tribe superstition, or perhaps even a jo
ke, if they were capable of such. He realized that he knew less and less about these people as he thought more on them. That they were cunning and more fierce than any soldier had been led to believe had been proven to him now. That he knew for certain.
He and Wat needed horses if they hoped to make it back home. He knew that, too. Black luck, he thought. Black luck is on me now. The rain had let up a bit. Joth raised himself back up among the roots and peered out. It was dusk now and he searched the base of the hill with his eyes in the fading light but saw nothing. Were they waiting for the rain to stop, he wondered? It unnerved him, knowing that the enemy host was so nearby and that he was trapped here on this hill with his wounded friend and no hope of relief from his plight.
Joth was no general, but he knew that he had to get himself and Wat out of there before the enemy came looking for them. For he knew being discovered would mean certain death. If word were to reach the Magistry that there were armed tribesmen openly attacking a survey company, there would be dire consequences for the Dawn Tribes. The savages knew that for certain. If the savages could steal horses, then so could he, Joth thought. I’ll wait for them to celebrate their victory, and in the darkness I’ll creep down to the village and bring back two horses, then it’s Wat and me away from here. As he gazed down at the darkening hillside and listened to the rain stop he knew it was their only way home.
Two
Lord Rhael Uhlmet, Mage Imperator, was not used to feeling helpless. It was, he realized, one of his deepest fears and his least pleasant way of feeling. It was especially horrible for him to be stripped and tied out like an animal for slaughter, and whipped by children while the elders looked on in laughter. The indignation of being captured by these savage goat herders in the first place was compounded by the slow steady torture being exacted on him since he had been dragged into the roundhouse as his men were ambushed and ultimately defeated. Worthless command, he thought, absolutely worthless. An entire company armed and outfitted, unable to defeat these savage bush men and their simple tactics. He would have words with his subordinates upon his return. He may even word a formal complaint to his higher-ups. He was meant to have experienced soldiers under him, soldiers who obeyed and knew how to handle themselves in a fight, but what he had gotten were a bunch of sniveling ninnies who had balked at every turn. Now I must suffer this indignation at the hands of these primitives, he thought, wincing as a birch switch caught him painfully in the pit of his outstretched arm.
