“You could return home.”
She shook her head slowly. “None of us here has a home any longer, sir.” She studied his face and came to a conclusion. “I, for one, will go with you.”
Findaen returned at that moment, using a soiled piece of cloth to wipe blood and filth from a pair of keys suspended from a small chain. “I found them on one of those you killed.” He grimaced. “You left him quite a mess – they’re not very clean, I’m afraid.”
“They’ll do.” Aram freed the occupants of the first wagon and then did the same with the others, taking the dark-haired girl – whose name was Chanita – with him, to make the process go more easily. There were eight women – mostly girls – in each wagon. He moved quickly. Now that his strike was successfully executed, he was anxious to move the train east and hopefully get beyond the barrier provided by the bulk of Burning Mountain before the day ended.
He let all the young women out of the wagons and left them clustered together – unguarded – near the center of the train while he went to see to the drivers.
Luca saw him approach. “We will all go with you, sir, gladly. None of us has any reason to return to Elam.”
Aram quickly swept the faces, looking for reluctance but saw only the eagerness that comes with unexpected salvation. “Will you drive the wagons?”
Luca nodded. “We will.” Mallet had wandered up, and the young driver’s gaze wandered to the sword hung from his belt. Mallet, because of his huge size, had taken to wearing his sword suspended from a wide leather belt fastened around his waist, like a knife. Luca stared at the blade for a long moment and then met Aram’s gaze. His fear had vanished due to the alteration of his circumstances, and was now replaced by reckless courage.
“I’ll take one of those, too, if you’ll let me.”
Aram laughed. “I may do that – we have plenty.” He motioned toward the wagons. “Let’s get the girls back into the wagons and go.”
Wamlak pointed at the lasher bodies with his chin. “What about them?”
This, Aram suddenly realized with chagrin, was a problem to which he had given no thought. Of course they couldn’t just leave the bodies to rot beside and on the road, and expect to wield the element of surprise the next time. Manon – and Elam, too – would discover soon enough what had happened. There was nothing to be gained by making the enemy’s task any easier. He looked around. There was no good place nearby to hide the evidence of their morning’s work, and he didn’t have time to bury them out of sight on the hillside. There was but one thing to do.
He turned to Wamlak. “Let’s put the women into nine wagons – that’s just one extra in eight of them – and see if we can load the lashers into the tenth. We’ll burn it once we get beyond the mountain.”
It was a difficult task, loading the massive, mangled bodies of six lashers into the wagon – in fact, without Mallet it would not have been done – but by the time the sun neared the meridian, they had cleared the road of any evidence of their activity, including using some canteens to bring water from the spring and washing the brackish blood down into the grass and soil. An hour later, the wagons had moved through the junction of the two roads and were wheeling eastward up the dry lake valley toward home.
Aram was pleased. He had gained eighty young women to meld into the free peoples of his principality, easing an impending societal problem – more importantly, he had saved those women from horror, and robbed his enemy of their use in his wicked designs.
20
They attacked two more slave trains over the next month, one near the location of the first and a second inside the gap leading north during a driving snowstorm. In this third attack they surprised the lashers by issuing forth from the ravine where Aram and his companions had camped earlier in the year. As a result of all three assaults, they rescued two hundred and eight women.
After each assault, the carts were driven eastward across the plains, and through the ford in the river by Dane’s farm, and then to Derosa. Once there, Ka’en and other women of the town took charge of the rescued girls, finding them homes in which to stay until a more general type of housing could be constructed – something that the single young men set about to do eagerly under Dane’s direction.
The wagons were taken apart so that Timmon would have the means to construct his conveyances for bringing the timbers from the green hills southward to the site of the fortress on the hill. By the time of the attack on the third train, a large, six-sided structure had begun to take shape atop the hill, and it rose, day by day, with gratifying speed.
And day by day, Aram watched the approach of winter and was of two minds. He desperately hoped to catch at least one more wagon train headed north before deteriorating weather stopped them entirely. But he was also anxious – now that increasingly bad weather lessened the possibility of an attack on Derosa – to go south into Duridia and then eastward to Lamont, and perhaps even further eastward, into Seneca.
When, after a period of cold and storms that seemed to portend full winter, the weather cleared a bit and warmed unexpectedly, he decided to try and find one more wagon train going north out of Elam. He was fairly certain that there would be none this late in the year – but he had been surprised at their good fortune thus far, so he gathered his troops, veterans all now, and headed west.
Once again, they waited upon the smooth shores of the dry lake while Alvern went ahead, sailing above the Land Beyond the Gates, gazing down upon the northern approaches to Elam. And once more, there was good news.
“Eight wagons, my lord, moving north.”
“Lashers?”
“Ten.”
Aram felt his eyes widen. Ten? Usually, with an eight-wagon train, four to six of the great beasts accompanied it. Manon was evidently tired of losing his precious slaves, and had doubled the guard on this, which was surely the last train of the year. He looked around at Findaen.
“This will be a bit more difficult than before. There are ten lashers with this lot. They’ve grown more careful.”
“I heard,” Findaen replied, and he shrugged. “But we’ve gotten better at killing them, too, my lord. Just about every man here has struck a death-blow.”
“True,” Aram agreed, “still, ten is half our number – it creates difficulties.” He shifted in the saddle and found Wamlak. “The archers will need to make every arrow count.”
Wamlak smiled savagely. “Don’t we always? I promise you, my lord – every beast will be leaking blood by the time you engage.”
Aram nodded and looked toward the front, toward the gap in the hills beyond which lay the broad green land, tinged now with tan and yellow.
“Where are the wagons?” He asked Alvern.
“An hour south of town. But they move slowly. At this speed, they will approach the gap just before midday.”
Aram nodded and glanced around at his men. “We’ll attack from the hillside again – any questions?”
The faces of his companions were set in lines of competent determination. They’d done this before; more than that, these men had by this time become warriors in fact. The simple farmers and hunters were gone, replaced by steel-hard veterans who’d grown adept at fighting and killing. Jonwood, usually so calm and austere, actually grinned with eagerness as his Prince’s gaze swept over him.
The sun had slanted just west of the midpoint in the crisp blue sky when the first wagon rumbled along the road where the men of Derosa waited behind the cover of the evergreens scattered in and through the broad leafs – now bare-limbed in the face of winter.
Aram drew the sword and Thaniel lunged forward. As they exploded from the trees and underbrush, the drivers abandoned the wagons en masse – almost as if by design – and sprinted southward across the rolling prairie. Momentarily surprised by this concerted action, Aram nonetheless raised the sword above his head, finding the sunlight, as a pair lashers to his front turned to face the assault. At that moment, the doors to the wagons were flung open.
L
ashers spilled forth; four or five tumbled from each dark interior.
Aram yelled in surprise and alarm.
“It’s a trap!”
And it had been properly sprung.
Where moments before there had been the quiet of purpose and order – now, back along the train of wagons, hoarse yells of shock and fear arose as the men of Derosa faced not ten lashers, but forty or fifty.
Aram recognized in an instant the futility of continuing the assault.
“Run!” He yelled at the top of his voice and his mind. “Go east – get away!”
If his companions did not immediately extricate themselves from this conflict and flee, using the superior strength and speed of the horses to remove themselves quickly, they would die.
As Thaniel charged through the clot of lashers immediately to his front, Aram dropped the sword and let it sweep through the massed bodies as the horse went through to the other side and out onto the open prairie. He turned and looked back along the train. All he saw was bedlam.
“RUN!” Fear for the lives of his companions added strength to his voice and he roared. “Run for your lives!”
From between the wagons, horses emerged, plunging and surging through vicious clots of lashers, who in turn slashed and jabbed at them and their riders.
Free of the lashers in his vicinity, Aram twirled the sword madly above his head, washing it in sunlight.
“Run!” He yelled again. “Run!”
Ten, fifteen, and finally twenty horses broke through and swung south across the prairie, arcing toward the west, followed by Leorg and Shingka, responding to the fear in Aram’s voice.
One of the horses was lacking a rider, and was bleeding from more than one wound.
Colrad – Jonwood’s mount.
Realizing that Jonwood had been thrown, the big gray horse turned and charged back toward the wagons. Aram stopped him with a mental lash.
“Go with the others!”
After a moment’s quivering hesitation, Colrad complied and Aram turned toward the enemy.
The lashers had given chase to their fleeing quarry, forming up quickly and sweeping toward Aram in a wide crescent. They could not hope to catch the running horses but they no doubt hoped that some that had been injured in the initial conflict might fall behind. Or maybe they simply wanted – or had been ordered – to take note of the direction of flight.
Aram stood high in the stirrups and swung the sword in a broad circle, letting the angled sunlight find every inch of the blade. The weapon’s strange song arose and within moments reached a crescendo of head-splitting sound. When the lashers were but yards away, pounding straight at him, their lances lowered toward Thaniel’s chest, Aram leapt from the great horse’s back.
“Get behind me.” He sent this thought sharp and hot into Thaniel’s mind with such force that the horse did not argue.
Twirling the sword above his head in one final, sweeping arc, Aram went to his knees. With all his might, he extended his arms and swung it across the path of the oncoming lashers, waist high. As before, the unearthly blade seemed to respond to his intent, as if it heard and understood his thoughts. Fire flashed. Golden flame leapt from the sword and sizzled along the arc of its transit. An odd sound accompanied the blinding flash of flame, like that made by the storms that rolled across the surface of the sun wherein it had been made.
And then there was an odder silence, broken a moment later by the thuds of heavy bodies falling upon the grass and the crackling of flame as the wagons – behind the mangled lasher bodies and along the tangent of the sword stroke – were set ablaze by the blast of unearthly fire. Two or three of the wagons had been almost demolished by the power of the blade. Many of the oxen were dead, most were injured.
Nearer at hand, more than forty lashers lay in a bleeding, steaming, smoking arc across the prairie in front of Aram. Except for the involuntary twitching and jerking of dying muscle, none moved.
He stood and ripped the hood from his head and sprinted toward the wagons, looking for Jonwood. Behind him, the grasslands rumbled with the sounds of approaching hooves as his companions came back to join him. He looked up as Wamlak and Braska swept past.
“Find Jonwood!”
But the plea was unnecessary. That thought was already uppermost in Wamlak’s mind. As the dark-haired archer dismounted, running back along the train, peering under the wagons, shouting Jonwood’s name, Aram saw that his left side was darkened with effusions of blood.
Aram gave chase. At the next to last wagon, Wamlak looked behind it and then knelt down and peered beneath. He immediately stood and looked toward Aram. “Here!”
Finding himself unhorsed and badly injured, Jonwood had managed, in the confusion, to slip under the nearest wagon, unnoticed by the lashers as they sought more numerous prey. He sat hunched against the inner side of a wheel in a frighteningly broad pool of his own blood, clutching at the stump of his right arm, from which the pool was fed with gradually diminishing spurts. The rest of that limb had been severed just below the elbow. His face was pale, pasty, his eyes glazed and out of focus, and he was shaking uncontrollably. But for one brief moment, his gaze focused on Wamlak’s face.
“Stay down,” he said in a terribly thin voice, “there’s lightning in the area.” He gazed down in confusion at the stump of his arm. “Damn lasher took my hand,” he said, and looked back up at Wamlak. “Where’s my hand, Wam – will you find my hand?”
“Sure, Jon, in a minute. Let me fix this first.” Wamlak had thrown off his breastplate and ripped a long, wide strip of cloth from his shirt which he had tied around Jonwood’s arm and was twisting tighter in an instinctive attempt to staunch the flow of blood. Aram felt sick. The stoic Jonwood was one of his favorite people, ever willing, always calm, and unfailingly competent. He slipped under the wagon on the opposite side of the wheel and braced Jonwood from behind. The man’s skin felt cold – too cold.
He looked at Wamlak. “We have to get him home.”
Wamlak nodded. “I think I’ve stopped him losing blood. We’ll put him in front of me on Braska, and ride like hell straight to Fiera.”
“Get me Mallet, and then mount up.”
Wamlak ducked out, replaced in a moment by the massive bulk of Mallet.
“I’ll support him and move him toward you,” Aram said, “pick him up as soon as you can and set him in front of Wamlak.”
Aram gently slid Jonwood’s upper body around the wheel. Mallet cupped one enormous arm under his legs and a moment later, slipped the other between Jonwood and Aram, lifting him like a child. Mallet placed him on Braska in front of Wamlak. Jonwood’s eyes were half-closed but he reached out with his left hand beseechingly. “My other hand – where’s my other hand?”
Aram spun on his heels, searching the ground around the wheel. Mallet shuffled around the corner toward the front of the wagon, eyes fixed on the ground; after a moment, he reappeared, gingerly holding a pale but red-stained, oddly wrinkled human appendage. The fingers of the hand were tightly curled, as if in death they yet gripped the hilt of a weapon. Mallet’s eyes streamed tears as he gently laid the severed hand and bit of arm on Jonwood’s lap.
Jonwood grasped his severed limb, eyes now fully glazed, and whispered weakly. “Thank you, Wam, thank you.”
Aram met Wamlak’s eyes.
“Go,” he said. “We’re right behind you.”
Ever pragmatic, Wamlak glanced around at the broken, smoking wagons, and the mass of lasher bodies. “What about –?”
“It was an ambush,” Aram interrupted. “They know about us. I no longer care. Go.”
Braska lunged away across the prairie, followed by the riderless Colrad. Aram climbed up on Thaniel and looked down at Durlrang, Leorg, and Shingka.
“Make sure they’re all dead, and then come.”
“Yes, master.”
Thaniel surged forward, trailing Wamlak toward the east, followed by the others. The strikes upon Manon’s slave trains were thus ended; now, he
would have to face down Elam in order to stop this particular evil. In the meantime, there was Jonwood’s life to worry about. The stout little man had lost a terrifying volume of blood before Wamlak found him. Aram felt the muscles in his chest tighten with dread as Thaniel galloped eastward up the valley of the dry lake.
Unbidden, Flinneran’s words came at him –
A lot of people die near you.
Please, Aram prayed in response to the remembered taunt, not this one.
The sun slid away to the west, deserting the cold winter sky, as they drove madly eastward, toward the end of a terrible day.
Jonwood yet lived eight hours later when, covered with flecks of foam across his neck and chest and back along his sides, Braska slid to a stop on the street behind the tavern in front of the house where Jonwood lived with his wife, Fiera, and their children. White-faced but instantly efficient, Fiera took charge of her husband, instructing Mallet to place him on a bed near the fire. Jonwood still clutched his severed hand; at the sight of it, anguish momentarily spasmed across Fiera’s features, then she slipped both of his arms discreetly beneath the coverlet, away from the eyes of children. She didn’t look at Aram. Indeed, once her husband was tucked into bed, and her eldest daughter sent in search of warm water, she seemed to lose all cognizance of the presence of anyone else.
Aram slipped away, followed by Mallet and Findaen. Wamlak had pulled a chair to the fire, out of the way but close to his friend, evidently intending to stay. Like Fiera, he seemed to lose interest in everything but the welfare of the small, compact man that was his best friend in the world.
Outside, in a cold, starlit night that felt of frost, Findaen took a deep breath and glanced at Aram. “I need a drink.”
Aram nodded, feeling suddenly weary. “I’ll remove Thaniel’s armor and join you shortly.”
After relieving Thaniel of his armor and storing it in a shed attached to Arthrus’ shop, Aram walked with the great horse down through the gate and out onto the plains. The Glittering Sword of God hung above the horizon, angling downward, as if it meant to pierce the darkened earth. Aram gazed up at it silently. Thaniel swung his head around.
Kelven's Riddle Book Three Page 18
