After caring for and tethering their mounts, the rangers crept off into the dim woods. Bow at the ready, Othin settled on the hill in view of the horses. Heige and Prederi spread out, finishing the triangle from which the three of them could watch the area.
Dusk cloaked the forest. Now that he was apart from his companions, including the animals, Othin’s senses sharpened. The fog thickened; drizzle tapped on the leaves. A faint breeze stirred the trees. After a time, the ranger noticed the absence of anything stirring; no wildlife, no birds, no movement. Then the snap of a stick hit the air.
Slowly, Othin drew his longknife and leaned around the tree. His first thought was that someone up there had seen him. He scanned the hill, limned with dark trunks and swaths of gray brush. Something moved, but he couldn’t see it, only sense it as it moved across the foliage. An animal? It didn’t blend like an animal. It wasn’t human either. It drifted across the rise like a ghost, invisible.
A ghost wouldn’t have stepped on a stick.
Othin sensed that the figure moved down past him, some twenty paces away. The ghost had not detected his presence. Othin returned his knife to its sheath and drew around his bow, arrow nocked. He drew the string, following the figure through the trees, aiming low.
He hesitated with a breath as something changed. Down by the horses, coming in from the opposite direction, was another figure, cloaked in svartr black and soundless as a fox. Human, yet not. An uneasy feeling faded in and out of his mind, as it had all day. “There you are, fox,” he whispered. The figure ducked behind a cluster of rocks, blending with the moss. The ghost kept moving toward the horses. The beasts grew restless as the presence spoke a word and became visible, a man with long stringy hair, clad in the trappings of a mercenary. He neared the rocks, furtive, yet careless and over-confident.
From behind the rocks came a swift attack from the fox. Othin lowered his bow and rose as the newcomer leapt into the air, swung around and hit the man with a kick that sprawled him on the ground. The horses spooked. Othin broke into a run.
The fox came down on the man with a sharp, nasty punch to the face. “Hold!” Othin commanded, drawing his sword.
Prederi arrived. Surprising the fox, he pulled him off the other and put a knife to his throat. “Easy, there.”
Othin put the tip of his blade down to the ghost. He lay still, staring at the sky with a bleeding smile across his throat.
Heige arrived, breathing heavily from having run through the woods. “Shit,” he muttered. Then he laughed.
“Leave off, you brute,” the newcomer said. Othin swung around as Prederi flipped his knife up and knocked the hood from the fox’s face. Rande.
“Does Alaric know you left the border?” Prederi said.
“I don’t answer to him,” she returned.
Othin sheathed his blade. “You answer to me.” He pointed to the dead man at his feet. “We could’ve done that to you, had we been as rash. Why have you been following us?”
Rande blinked, as if the accusation startled her. But she didn’t deny it. “I was tracking him and two others who were shadowing you since you left the inn. They worked for the sheriff.”
The men turned and stared at Othin with raised brows. “Since when did Sheriff Thorn’s mercenaries know how to cloak themselves in magic?” Othin said.
Rande shrugged. “Many things have changed up here,” she said evasively.
“Heige got a scout this morning,” Othin said. “Are you telling me there’s another one?”
Her eyes turned cold as a cat’s. “Not now.”
“You killed him?” Heige said.
“Not before I found out that the sheriff is holding Bren at the Moor’s Edge.”
In the heavy silence, Othin’s blood turned cold.
“Well, it would be there, wouldn’t it,” Prederi said.
“What happened there?” Rande asked.
Othin rubbed his face. “It was during the war. I came up here hunting draugr. The night I stayed in the Moor’s Edge, Thorn sent his ruffians to lure me into the open by stealing my horse. I threw my honor to Hel that night. I killed two, and roughed up the sheriff and another for information. Now he wants payback.”
“So he’s making a point,” Prederi said. “That means this is a trap. They took Bren to the Moor’s Edge to draw us in.” He stomped to the horses. After a moment, he returned with the beasts and handed the reins to his companions. Then he mounted, his face set. Heige followed suit.
Othin unstrung his bow and slipped it into the pouch on his back, then mounted. “We’re forgetting something,” he said. “According to Bothilde and the girl, Bren was taken by a Fenrir sorcerer. What was a sorcerer doing in the Borderland with Sheriff Thorn?”
“Maybe the sheriff needed to use magic to capture Bren,” Rande offered. “Bren would’ve sensed them. Maybe they cloaked themselves so he couldn’t see.”
“That assumes they knew he was there.”
“Fenrir sorcerers can put unseen watchers on people and things. It wouldn’t have been hard to find him.”
Othin nodded, remembering the phooka Leofwine had used to track him down during the war. He gazed west, toward the mountains rising up from the gloom. Rande seemed to know a lot about sorcerers. “Bren taught me to sense the difference between humans, animals and Others,” he said to her. “How are you able to shapeshift your energy so you don’t feel human?”
She looked off into the woods. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I felt you. You weren’t all there.”
She shook her head. “Honestly, Captain, I—”
“Maybe it’s a tracker thing,” Heige suggested, watching her for a reaction. She ignored him.
“Right,” Othin said. “You’re coming with us.”
Her mouth twitched. “Alaric will shit a kitten when I don’t report.”
“He really doesn’t know you’re up here?”
“There wasn’t time. I was on patrol when I saw the scouts. I heard their talk and learned they were tracking you. So I followed them.” She shifted on her feet. “When I heard them mention the Moor’s Edge, I had to find you and tell you.”
“How’d you get close enough to hear them?”
Heige wheezed a laugh. “She got close enough to knife them. Must be that animal sense.”
Othin clenched his jaw, hating the little monster of suspicion whispering in his mind. Rande had left her patrol and somehow managed to keep pace with mounted men, killed three supposed scouts—the last after Othin had told her to stand down—and she was capable of cloaking her energy like a shapeshifter. He told himself that none of this meant she was in league with sorcerers, necessarily. Thorgrim trackers were reputed to have uncanny abilities; that was one of the reasons he’d put her on the Ylgr border patrol.
“Ride with Prederi,” he said to her. The tall ranger, entertaining his own doubts, exchanged glances with Heige.
Rande’s expression closed to business as she strode to Prederi, took his hand and leapt up behind him.
“We go overland, stick to the woods and approach the inn from the south,” Othin said. “Hopefully, the fact that they put scouts on us means we aren’t being tracked by Others.”
“That doesn’t mean they don’t know where we are,” Heige added, a miserable thought that had also occurred to Othin. He avoided a glance at Rande.
“Do you have a plan?” Prederi asked, turning his mount around.
“I’m working on it.” His plan felt like a fire sputtering in the rain. For all they knew, the sheriff had already killed Bren and left him somewhere for them to find, as they had Tasn and Rolof. But he didn’t need to say that. They were all thinking it.
The Sorcerer’s Operative
The night hung low as Othin, Prederi and Heige hunkered behind a brushy rise in sight of the Moor’s Edge. They had left their horses in a small copse not far behind them. Othin studied the sky, sensing rather than seeing the predawn bleed into the clouds. As they reach
ed the sparse, rolling moors surrounding the inn, his earlier irritation with the rain and the svartr trees had faded to nostalgia. A single light shone from a downstairs window.
“I don’t like this plan, War God,” Heige said, fingering the string on his bow.
“Captain War God,” Othin returned. “No point doing this until we find out if Bren’s in there.”
The rangers had camped briefly the night before, while still in the shelter of the woods. Othin put the first part of his plan into motion by agreeing to send Rande to the inn on a reconnaissance mission. She had volunteered, of course, exacerbating his suspicion, but he couldn’t argue against it. Rande wouldn’t be recognized, and her shapeshifting ability might prove useful if there were people in there with eldritch sensitivities.
Rande had agreed to let the rangers make it look like she’d been roughed up at their hands. They tore up her clothes, smeared her with soot from their fire and put a shallow but noticeable knife cut on her arm. For the final touch, Heige clocked her, knocking her down in the mud. Othin hadn’t suggested that part, but Rande must have thought it was a good idea when she had asked Heige, with an innocently sarcastic air, if he knew how to fuck a girl after taking goats in the asses for so long. Heige grew up on a goat farm, and Rande never tired of picking on him about it.
Prederi stirred by his side. “What sort of sign are we looking for?”
“She said she’d make it obvious,” Othin said.
“Do you trust her?”
Othin stared ahead. As much to convince himself, he said, “She’s never given me a reason not to.”
“Alaric trusts her,” Heige said.
“He wants her,” Othin corrected. “His opinion has been compromised.”
They waited for what felt like hours, though it was only a short time. A lone bird chirruped. The Dark Lords and their henchmen would know what happened at the Borderland by now, which meant they would have emptied the Moor’s Edge of regular patrons. Othin’s heart was as grim as a long winter, tired, hard and done with it all. Bren’s smile flashed across his mind like the singing bird.
“Something should’ve happened by now,” Prederi said.
“I’m liking this less and less,” Heige agreed.
Othin couldn’t argue with them.
Just then, the light in the window went out. After a moment, it came back on again.
“That’s it,” Prederi said, moving to get up.
“Wait,” Othin said, grabbing his arm. “Something’s happening.”
The barn doors rattled and slammed open, spilling faint light on the ground outside. Dark figures emerged, mounted, cloaked and fully armed. Othin pulled his bow around. “Looks like they took the bait.” He nocked an arrow and drew back his bowstring, breathing deeply.
“Good...” Prederi purred, arrow pointed at the road.
Three riders urged their mounts into a fury outside the inn. Rocks and grit flew up under their horses’ hooves as they rode south. The rangers, far enough away to avoid being seen in the dim light, waited. Then their bowstrings sang.
The rider hanging just behind the other two was flung back in his saddle. Clutching the arrow in his throat, he lost his grip and twisted aside, then fell and thumped onto the ground. The second man shouted as he took two shafts in the back.
The third, who’d been blocked by the other two, drove his mount into a gallop.
“Heige!” Othin said. The archer was already on his feet by the road, his bow drawn.
Rande appeared at the barn door. She started to make a signal with her hand but was interrupted as a man came up behind her.
“Shit,” Prederi hissed.
Heige shot wide, missing his target. In a flash, he snatched another arrow and tried again. In the distant gloom, the rider tumbled from his horse. Othin slapped him on the back as they ran for the barn.
By the time they got there, Rande was gone. A man lay on the ground just inside, clutching a bleeding wound in his gut. Prederi reached down, grasped him by the cloak at his neck and hauled him up. “Bad idea, picking on her,” the ranger growled. The man choked as Prederi slammed him against the wall. “Where’s the red-haired ranger?”
Heige moved into the dusty gloom, sword drawn, and began freeing the horses. They thundered out of the door as he ran them off. As Heige returned, Othin said to him, “Go outside and make sure no one leaves.” The ranger nodded and strode out.
The wounded man glared up at the rangers, jaw clenched in pain, eyes hard. “Find out what he knows,” Othin said. He went up the steps to the inn. As he opened the door and entered the common room, the wounded man cried out as Prederi began his grim work.
The room was dark but for the candle lantern by the window and the glow from the coals in the round fire pit in the center of the room. Something moved to his left, and Othin brought up his blade. The figure rushed him, half knocking him into the wall. He struck his assailant in the face and then twisted out of the way, narrowly avoiding a knife as the blade glanced off the mail beneath his hauberk. Leveraging against the wall, he shoved the man back and brought his sword around in a series of cuts, the last of which found an opening. The man dropped to his knees with his hand on his neck, blood pumping through his fingers.
The inn had come alive with stomping boots, shouts and slamming doors. A long, narrow stairwell ran up on Othin’s right. A man stomped down the steps with a growl and eyes like a boar. Othin swung around, getting his blade up just in time to parry a vicious downward slice that would have split his skull. As the ruffian continued his momentum, Othin reversed his sword and put the blade beneath the man’s arm, driving in. The man tried to claw Othin’s face, then cried out as the ranger wrenched the blade free. He slammed the pommel between the man’s shoulder blades, sending him sprawling onto the floor.
Othin looked up as Prederi came in from the barn. The tall ranger shook his head. “Wouldn’t talk. Something had him right scared, and it wasn’t me. Have you found Rande?”
Across the room, the candle went out. A dark figure moved there; two more melted from the shadows by the kitchen door. The faint light from the fire pit shone on their faces, deepening the lines. They drew their swords.
“No,” Othin said, unclasping his cloak and letting it slide to the floor. Something crashed upstairs. “Go see if she’s up there.”
Prederi stepped over the body and bounded up the steps.
Othin stepped forward, rolling his shoulders. Blood crept down the length of his blade. The three men spread out, with confidence, swords in hand. The one on his left kicked a bench out of the way as if it angered him. The other two, their expressions closed, moved calmly, with quiet confidence, focused on the kill. Seasoned professionals. Othin skirted around the front of the room to avoid being cornered. The first man stepped on something that made a metallic creaking noise.
A grate. The cellar. With that discovery, Othin knew where Bren was. At that same moment, he sensed something else down there, a presence that rattled his nerves like a scream, clacking bones in a hollow grave torn by claws.
This nasty lot was only the first line of defense.
Othin moved left, toward the weakest, the one who had angrily kicked the bench.
A roar in the stairwell was followed by a heavy thud and the sound of a body falling head over heel down the steps. Ignoring the commotion, a man on his right came at Othin with a methodical swipe of his blade. The ranger parried easily and rallied swiftly as another tested his other side. Then their attacks erupted into a flurry, merciless and clearly intended to put him down without a show. Othin held his guard, his back nearing the wall.
Desperate for an opening, he took a chance and looked quickly toward the stairs, grinning at the imaginary ranger there. “Prederi!” he gasped. Sure enough, the careless one turned. Taking the only chance he was going to get, Othin went high and brought his sword down in a killing arc. The blow opened him from ear to neck before the blade struck mail. As the warrior fell to his knees, Othin ducked
the resulting reprisal on his right, plowed the fallen man into the others and rolled out of the way.
Beneath the floor, bones clicked and shrieked. Something pale shifted across his mind, laughing.
Up quickly, Othin ran around to the far side of the fire pit. He reached down, grabbed a small ash shovel leaning there and slammed it into the coals, sending them flying. A glowing chunk hit one of the men in the face, causing him to slam a hand over his eye. The other, unruffled and clearly the most seasoned of the bunch, hopped up on the edge of the pit and moved around it with eerie grace.
An image of a pale, gaunt wraith with long claws and no eyes fled over Othin’s mind. It had Bren’s severed head in its arms.
Othin jumped back with a breath as the man leapt up without warning and brought his sword around. He reversed the swing midleap, forcing Othin to do the same, which he barely managed; the force of the blow drove him down. The warrior kicked him in the chest, knocking the wind out of him. As Othin slammed onto his back, his head snapped back and hit the floor.
Stunned, Othin rolled aside as the burned man’s sword flashed down toward his bowels. The tip of the blade struck him in the side below his mail, driving him into a fetal position. A boot came down on his arm, forcing a cry from his throat. He dropped his blade. The dark-eyed man regarded him for just a moment as he came down for the kill.
A man towered behind, blond hair glinting in the firelight. Prederi. The bloody tip of a sword thrust out from the dark-eyed warrior’s chest, stopping him cold. Prederi withdrew with a brutal twist, kicking the man off his blade and onto the floor. The burned man had fled into the kitchen.
“He went to warn them,” Othin panted as Prederi knelt by his side. “I think Bren’s below, in the cellar.” He tried to move, his vision swimming as pain spread out from his waist, just above his belt. “Help me up.”
The Fylking: Outpost and The Wolf Lords Page 51
