Treachery in Tarnstead (Stoneblood Saga Book 5)

by Robyn Wideman

  Hussain nodded.

  Lambert walked away from the man. He hated giving that order, as it would mean giving Hussain first opportunity to kill Nathan Stoneblood, but the risk of facing them with only ten men wasn’t worth going ahead himself. But the consequences of letting them escape was death, so better to risk losing some credit than his life. Hussain was right though. It was now a race.

  29

  “What did you see?” Nathan asked.

  “Same as before; two scouts,” Magnus replied.

  Nathan sighed. They had thought they might’ve slipped past the scout in Ferndale, but two days later Katla was checking their back trail and spotted him. Worse news came with the spotting of a second scout.

  “I don’t like it,” Raven said. “I feel a trap coming.”

  Nathan felt the same way. “Hanna how far from Blackpool are we now?”

  Hanna shrugged. “We’ve been off the main roads for days now, but that last river we passed was likely the Cannavah. If we were on the road, we’d be two days’ ride from Blackpool, maybe one if we had to push it. But if we stay off the road three maybe four days.”

  “OK. We have a choice to make. We either stay to the mountains or head for the road. I’m starting to think we should head back to the road. We haven’t been able to lose their scouts and the longer it takes us to get to Blackpool the more time they have to organize. Anyone have thoughts on what we should do?” Nathan knew Magnus would likely be for staying in the woods, but the others hadn’t stated any opinions either way. They seemed willing to let him and Hanna make the decisions. But this one was one he wanted everyone to have the option of speaking up.

  “From what we learned in Ferndale, every soldier within a hundred miles was sent to Blackpool. The only local resources being used to hunt us seem to be these two scouts,” Katla said. “I would guess that means a force coming from Progoh looking for us. It’s most likely that we were spotted leaving Raumont, which would explain a scout waiting for us in Ferndale. If a force of soldiers left Progoh at the same time we left Raumont we’d still be ahead of them, but every day they will gain on us. If we arrive at Blackpool with a force in front of us and another behind us …”

  “We’d be doomed,” Magnus said, finishing Katla’s sentence. “I think everyone knows I’d rather stay to the woods, but Katla is right. If we don’t get to Blackpool soon we will have nowhere to go. We’ll be vastly outnumbered and surrounded in a land we don’t know. I think it is time we made for the road if it means we can stay ahead of whatever troops are sent from Progoh. We have no idea what is happening in Blackpool right now but if we can slip through the pass, the chances of being pinned down is greatly reduced.”

  “What about you, Kiana? What do you think?” Nathan asked. While Kiana didn’t have the fighting experience of Magnus, Hanna, Katla, or even Rayan, she had Thieves’ Guild training and possibly knew more about avoidance and escape than the rest of them put together.

  “I think the longer it takes us to get to Blackpool the greater the odds. It is going to take King Parth time to get all his troops to Blackpool, but most of them will be moving from Progoh to Blackpool. Which is far north of the road from Tarrin to Blackpool. I agree that we should be more worried about troops coming from Progoh looking for us. If we beat them to Blackpool, we have a good chance. If not, we will be walking into a trap. These two scouts can work as a team now. One follows us while the other sends news of our position.”

  “Anyone disagree with heading for the road?” Nathan asked. No one said anything. “OK. Let’s start heading north again. As soon as you get to the road start following it.” Nathan dismounted and handed Kiana the reins.

  “And where are you going?” asked Magnus.

  “No matter which way we go, as long as there are two scouts watching our trail we have no chance. I’m going to take care of it.”

  “You should let Katla go,” Hanna said.

  Nathan glanced over at Katla. There was no doubt that she could kill the two scouts.

  “If we both went. It would be faster,” Katla said. “You put us all at risk going alone. You know we’d all turn back to find you if you took too long.” Katla slipped off her horse and handed the reins to Hanna.

  “Keep to a canter once you hit the road. At night fall camp on the southern side of the road, where you can’t be seen. We’ll catch you before morning.”

  As Hanna led the others north, Nathan turned to Katla. “What are you thinking?”

  “If we split up and follow our back trail, we will find them before too long. You go to the south of the trail, and I’ll go north.”

  Nathan nodded and unslung his bow. He knew that when it came to hunting men, Katla was far more experienced than he. His cousin’s companion had grown up as a member of the fabled Mykoznian King’s Guard. An elite unit of warriors trained from a young age to defend the king. However, their training wasn’t defensive in nature. The King’s Guard trained their apprentices in the ways of assassins and military tactics. The idea behind their rigorous training regimen was to give the warriors the advantage in any attempts at the king’s life. The King’s Guard philosophy was built on the premise of to beat an assassin you had to think like an assassin. So, when it came to planning an attack on the scouts tracking them, Nathan was more than willing to let Katla take the lead.

  “Stay about two hundred feet south of the trail, their eyes will be to the front and on the ground. They won’t suspect someone doubling back and hitting them from the sides. The wind is coming from the north, so it shouldn’t reveal you. I suspect as their backup troops get closer they will follow us closer, so don’t be surprised if it doesn’t take long at all before we run into them. They won’t want to lose our trail now that we’re getting close to Blackpool.” Katla then turned and headed northwest.

  Following Katla’s example, Nathan turned southwest and started walking back towards their previous camp. The last few days they’d been traveling through heavily wooded areas, and even though he’d only be two hundred feet south of the path they’d been making, he’d be hard to see through all the trees. As he walked, Nathan thought about the two women they were escorting across Tarnstead. Raven was a transplanted northerner, originally from one of the villages to the north of his grandfather’s town, taken by raiders at an early age and sold in another kingdom. Her companion, Shayla, was from Seron and a dragonblood. That Shayla was dragonblood made their rescue more important. Nathan didn’t know much about the history of dragons, but he did know the on-again, off-again, war between man and dragon was thousands of years old and the times of peace had been organized by dragonbloods. Now dragons were returning to the world people like Shayla would be imperative to any potential peace. Traditionally, Solotine had never had many dragons as eastern lands, giants, and creatures like vraber were natural enemies of dragons, but with giants all but gone from the land would dragons make their way into Solotine? It was a question Nathan couldn’t help but wonder about. The last hundred years had brought many changes to Solotine, would those changes now make Solotine a land dragons would want? Between King Parth and Lord Zellox, there already were enough problems to deal with. Adding dragons to the mix would create chaos.

  A shadow where there shouldn’t have been one caught Nathan’s attention. Someone was on the trail they used yesterday. It had only been a half an hour since he and Katla had started backtracking but Katla had suggested the scouts would start keeping closer to them. Raising his bow, Nathan watched through the thick woods and waited for the scout to show himself, ideally Nathan would spot both scouts before he attacked, but he also didn’t want to lose the advantage of surprise. Finally, a familiar form started walking towards him. Nathan sighed and lowered his bow.

  Katla grinned as she moved through an opening in the trees towards him. “Hanna told me you were a good woodsman, but I couldn’t be sure. You move well.”

  Nathan frowned as Katla spoke. She was being too loud, and she should be on the northern side of the
trail. As realization hit, Nathan felt foolish. Katla wasn’t breaking cover. She’d already killed the scouts. “I thought we were walking back slowly.”

  “No. You were to walk back slowly. I have advantages you don’t. Demon spirits can be a real pain to deal with at times, but one thing about them is they can sense life at a distance better than any human. I ran back until my demon sensed them. They were far better scouts than they were warriors.”

  “You killed them both,” Nathan said.

  “Not before finding some information out from one of them,” Katla said. “You were wise to double back. Your old friend Lambert Symons is on his way here with a couple platoons of the king’s top warriors.”

  Lambert Symons, the man who’d instigated the duel in Elderwood, hunting them down was bad news. It was likely he was being sent to finish the job he’d started in Elderwood. Nathan sighed in resignation. He’d hoped that killing the two scouts would be the end of the pursuit, but if Lambert Symons was in charge the man likely would just keep coming. “OK. Let’s get back to the others. Hopefully the loss of their scouts will slow them down a little.”

  “It might, but it won’t stop them. We’ll have to be prepared to fight.”

  Nathan knew she was right. There was a fight coming, the only question would be when and where. “Nothing we can do about that, we’ll just have to be prepared.

  Katla grinned.

  “That doesn’t worry you?” Nathan asked.

  “Sorry, I’m not normally happy at the thought of battle but when I call upon my demon spirit I tend to take on some of his traits. And he loves battle.”

  “Should we be worried about that?”

  Katla shook her head. “No. I can control it. But the less I control him the more powerful I become. Worst case scenario, Hanna has to kill me.”

  “She’d do that?” Nathan asked.

  “She has no choice. If the demon destroys my spirit, then all that would be left is my body and a demon controlling it. I’d do the same for her. That is the price we have to pay for bonding with demon spirits, but we had no choice. It was bond with demons or let the witches bring untold numbers of demons onto earth with the intent of destroying mankind.”

  “Hanna’s told me a little about what happened but never the whole story. You two have had some crazy adventures,” Nathan said.

  “You don’t know the half of it,” Katla said with a grin. “But we should get going, I think we have another adventure waiting for us before we leave Tarnstead.”

  …

  Galloping towards Blackpool, Hussain felt good. Going into battle always excited him, and the opportunity to kill Prince Stoneblood was a gift from the gods. If he and his men could finish off the prince before Lambert got there, King Parth would elevate Hussain instead, perhaps even giving him one of the highly coveted seats on his council. According to the scouts there were only eight riders and the majority were women. Why the prince would dare travel through Tarnstead with such small numbers mystified Hussain, but only a fool would ignore such an opportunity.

  Ahead on the road, Hussain spotted two people running. They weren’t sprinting but simply running at a fast ground-eating pace. Mercenaries too poor for proper mounts, thought Hussain as he rode up behind them. The weapons on their backs seemed to confirm the idea. The larger warrior had a bow, a sword, and a couple daggers, while the second one had a pair of swords. As he rode past them, Hussain glanced back, and to his surprise noted that the second warrior was a woman. He galloped ahead thinking about the oddity of seeing a woman warrior. A woman warrior traveling with a large warrior, a warrior so large he could be a northerner. Hussain pulled back on the reins until his horse came to a stop.

  Juran, one of his lieutenants, pulled up beside him. “What is the problem, sir?”

  Hussain turned his horse to look back up the road at the pair of running warriors who had now slowed to a walk. “We are looking for a group of northerners and women riding towards Blackpool. What are the odds of a northerner and a woman being right where we are going and not being part of that group?”

  Juran looked back over his shoulder. “The scouts said all had horses, but we’d better take a closer look. If we rode right by the prince, Lambert would kill us in our sleep.”

  Hussain smirked. As if he’d ever be fully asleep while a murderous bastard like Lambert Symons was in the same camp, but Juran had a point. They needed to find out who these two were. Perhaps he would get lucky and this tall northerner would be Prince Stoneblood himself. Hussain shook his head, it wasn’t possible that it would be that easy. “Dismount and spread out. Let’s find out who these runners are.”

  Nathan heard the horses behind them, they were coming up fast. They were in a small meadowed area where there was no cover. After miles of treed road where they could’ve easily jumped into the woods they were caught in the open.

  “Just keep running. If we’re lucky they’ll just think we are mercenaries on our way to Blackpool,” Katla said.

  Nathan followed Katla’s lead, as there really was no other option. The riders blew past them, with only the leader bothering to give a glance back at them. For a few moments it looked like they were going to keep riding on, but then the leader slowed to a stop and the rest quickly followed his lead.

  Katla started to slow as well. “Looks like the adventure has found us. How much do you want to bet this is an advanced party sent to cut us off.”

  Nathan looked at the horses. They were dripping with sweat and breathing heavy. They’d been at a full run for a while it seemed. Certainly not normal riders on their way to Blackpool. No, I don’t think I will take that bet.”

  The riders then dismounted and started to spread out and start walking back towards them.

  “Good choice,” Katla said. “How quick are you with that bow? You’re not one of those archers who needs thirty seconds to line up his shot are you?”

  “Quick enough, why?” Nathan asked.

  “When the middle group comes up they will start talking. The others will keep walking until we are totally flanked. When the fighting starts take out as many as you can with your bow. Start with the ones on our left. I’ll take the middle. We can fight over whoever is left.”

  Nathan smiled. She made fighting ten men sound easy. But just like she said, four came walking up the road and the others started circling around. Nathan casually reached back and pulled his quiver down, so it was on his hip instead of his back. His bow was still slung over his shoulder, but he would leave it there as long as possible.

  “Stop right there,” said the leader.

  “What is the problem?” Katla asked.

  “Pull down your hoods.”

  As Nathan pulled down his hood, he kept his arm up and let his hand rest on his bow. “Are you looking for someone? Perhaps we’ve seen them.”

  “Yes,” said the leader. “Looking for a blue-eyed northerner, but don’t worry I think we’ve found him. Greetings, Prince Stoneblood.”

  “And whom am I speaking to,” Nathan said.

  “Hussain of the Progoh blackguard.”

  “Greetings, Hussain of the Progoh blackguard. And what is your reason for looking for me?”

  “I’m here to arrest you on charges of bringing an enemy force into Tarnstead and inciting a revolution. I’m taking you to Progoh to be hanged.”

  Nathan looked over at Katla. “They consider you an enemy force.”

  Katla curtsied. “It’s about damn time someone did. But we do have to get going. You should probably decline their invitation.”

  “I agree. Sorry, I don’t think we’ll be accompanying you to Progoh, as per the accords.”

  Hussain pulled his sword. “No, you aren’t pulling any of that accord crap here. Men, get them.”

  As Hussain signaled the attack, Nathan pulled his bow over his shoulder and with his other hand pulled a pair of arrows out of the quiver. He turned to his left and fired the two arrows as fast as he possibly could at two of the three men on th
e left flank. From the corner of his eye he could see Katla pull out her new whip. As he reached for another pair of arrows, Nathan could hear the whip striking metal and skin and the cries of agony of the men.

  Ignoring the sounds of Katla fighting, Nathan fired at the third soldier on the left then pivoted and fired at the closest of the three on the right. The second two men were now too close, so he flipped the bow up so that his hand was on the bottom of the weapon and spun. As he spun around he drew his sword and used the bow as a club to strike the next warrior in the head. The man crumpled to the ground. Nathan let go of the bow and focused on the third man who was slashing with his sword. Nathan blocked the blow while stepping towards his right. The next blow came low. Nathan struck down with his sword, forcing the man’s sword into the ground, he then smashed his elbow into the blackguard warrior’s chest sending him sprawling back. Nathan then followed-up with a stab to the chest. As the warrior died, Nathan turned to face the man he’d hit with the bow.

  As he turned Nathan saw the man about to attack, but before he could Katla’s whip wrapped around the man’s neck and the head popped off and hit the ground.

  Nathan turned to see if any of the four warriors Katla had faced off with were alive. Only Hussain was alive, and just barely.

  Katla casually walked over to the sprawled-out Hussain and kicked his weapon aside.

  Hussain looked up. “How did you do that. No one can move that fast. You are a demon.”

  Katla leaned over. “Not exactly, but close enough. Now tell me about your orders or I will make sure your soul goes to the fifth realm of hell to be a plaything for my demon.”

  Hussain’s eyes went wide. “Please. Don’t damn my soul. I will tell you what you want to know. Lambert Symons is a half day ride behind us, but we were the only ones with fresh horses.”

  “And what do you know of the troops at Blackpool?” Katla asked.

  “The king’s troops are stationed on this side of the pass. Most of the troops in Eastern Solotine have retreated to there.”