Arm Of Galemar (Book 2)

by Damien Lake

  “Sloan won’t be bothering you much,” Kerwin pointed out. “He’ll be living in Fraser’s old quarters over in the officer’s building.”

  “So that only leaves us with Talbot and Edwin. Floroes is off in his own head most of the time, Korial hasn’t said ten words to me since I joined, and the other three who survived last year have always been loners.”

  “You want to come work for me? I need to recruit peacekeepers for the place.”

  “No,” Marik scowled. “I don’t.”

  “This is the way of life,” Dietrik offered, leaning back in his chair. “Acquaintances come and they go. Two of our friends are moving on. A whole slew of new fish will be landing in the Ninth’s barracks after the trials this year. Odds are a few will be friendly faces, mate.”

  “And we are hardly leaving Galemar, Marik,” Landon added with a soft smile. “We’ll be a brief march down the road.”

  “It still won’t feel right,” Marik persisted. “Almost everyone from when I joined will be gone.”

  “That is how a mercenary’s life usually runs.”

  “At least you’ll have seniority,” Kerwin chirped. “Sloan’s the sergeant. Edwin and Talbot and Floroes and Bancroft still claim the age on you, but you can lord it over the new boys!”

  Kerwin laughed; Marik grimaced. “That’s not my style. And they’ll be skittering like roaches around me anyway. The last thing I need is to sneer at them and send them stampeding out the door.”

  “Always you obsess over your mage talent.” Dietrik pursed his lips. “I tell you, mate, that nobody else in the entire band worries about that as much as you.”

  Marik’s grimace deepened. “It will be different this time, you watch. You all know me, knew me before…it, happened to me. But nobody coming into the band today does. At they probably won’t want to be around me long enough to learn better.”

  “You always take the dark view. I would hardly call you a social pariah. Your new lady love seems to care little one way or the other. Doesn’t that prove others still find you agreeable enough? Why do you persist in worrying about what other people think of you?”

  She only opened up to me because of what I am. But it was not worth telling Dietrik that. It would only prolong a discussion that had already greatly depressed him. Instead he told them, “I guess you’re right. Besides I already have plenty to keep me busy until next spring once we get back to Kingshome.”

  “The old man going to lock you up in his Tower day and night?” Kerwin asked with a leering grin. “Keep you reading books until your eyeballs wilt?”

  “Who cares?” Marik replied with a shrug. “He can make whatever plans he wants to. It won’t change anything between us. I meant my training regime will be taking most of the day as it is.”

  Kerwin and Landon raised questioning eyebrows while Dietrik sighed, “Again? Every winter you have more goals that you must achieve than the last! What will it be this time?”

  “I’ve been thinking about what you said,” Marik answered. At his friend’s blank expression, he elaborated. “I want to start carrying two swords. I don’t know if I want to replace the one I have with a smaller blade or not, but I want two sizes.”

  “That sounds like an intelligent idea,” Landon nodded. “I know your sword’s length hampered you several times when we fought in Thoenar.”

  “Well,” Marik hedged. “I would have done better if I’d had practical experience with it beforehand. I haven’t yet decided if I want this blade to be the smaller or the larger one.”

  “Back off a spec, mate! I recall, very clearly, you saying no one in his right mind would ever wield any of those larger blades we picked through in the armory!”

  “I said only an idiot would pick one for his primary weapon. I don’t intend to do that, only have it nearby so I can switch back and forth. With my strength working, the weight isn’t a factor!”

  Dietrik threw up his hands while the other pair watched in amusement. “But you can’t hold the working in place for long! You said so yourself that carrying a massive blade around all day will drain your strength before the battle ever starts!”

  “Which is why I’m going to be strength training this winter. I need to build up my muscle so the extra weight won’t bother me when the working isn’t in place.”

  “You intend to look like a plow ox? Like Beld?”

  “No! Don’t be stupid! I only want to build up my muscle mass, that’s all.” Hmm…not as broad across as I usually like. “And maybe work on endurance at the same time.”

  Dietrik gazed at him suspiciously, obviously suspecting deeper motives behind Marik’s reversal of opinion on a matter that he’d held strong beliefs on. Before either side could launch a follow-up strike in this conversational battle, a stranger stepped beside Landon, instantly capturing their attentions.

  “Evening, men,” he greeted with a faint rolling drawl. The accent’s flavor instantly affected Marik, recalling helpless feelings and impotent anger. He would bet every coin remaining in his purse that this uniformed stranger hailed from Galemar’s southwestern corner, probably not far from Tattersfield. “I’m not one to interrupt a gathering of friends, but I believe I overheard you mention the town of Kingshome.”

  Landon, closest to this man who smelled strongly of soldier, swiveled on his seat. “You heard correctly. And your interest would be?”

  “Business,” the man replied. “Are you traveling east or west?”

  “We are returning home, if that is what you were asking.”

  He nodded. “Ah, well. I’d hoped you were riding out. I assume you’ve been gone for a time? I thought as much. So you wouldn’t know how matters stand in your hometown at the moment.”

  “No, not after the amount of time we have been absent.”

  “I’m Riley, by the by. I serve Baron Atcheron as the captain of his guardsmen.”

  “One of the border barons,” Marik broke in. “I know that name.”

  That intrigued Riley. “You must be a seedling from our fields then. No one a hundred miles distant can put a name to any of the barons on the border.”

  “There are so many,” Landon agreed. “Adding together the barons rimming the kingdom, I am certain they would outnumber the other nobles further inland combined.”

  “Our barony can only claim three towns, none of them so large as this one, and two crumbling outpost forts from before the Unification, neither of which I would trust to house a family of starlings.”

  “Hence your interest in our hometown.”

  “Everyone along the border is scrambling,” Riley admitted. “Unless you’re coming from western Galemar, you have no idea how bad the situation is.”

  “Please, sit down,” Landon offered. Riley nodded, accepting a chair Kerwin hooked away from a half-occupied table with his foot.

  “The king is promising aid, but they don’t fully appreciate our situation. The refugees are drain enough already. The reports we’ve been receiving through our sources are enough to cool your blood.”

  “So your baron sent you off to hire on extra swords then,” Dietrik surmised.

  “Army soldiers might arrive to supplement our strength. They could as easily arrive to find a razed, smoking ruin.” At Marik’s startled rasp, Riley nodded. “Tullainia’s got bad business churning over there. If it spills over, from what I’ve seen, there’s no way we can hold it off. I command only a hundred-fifty men for Baron Atcheron.”

  “Only that many?” Marik could not believe it.

  Riley smiled bitingly. “You can call them nobles all you want, but border barons are only, by nature, garrison commanders. To be blunt about it.”

  “Yes,” Landon affirmed. “Shortly after the Unification, the Cerellan line needed extra incentive for the further vassals to defend their new kingdom loyally. I believe it was the third Cerella who declared all the old boarder garrisons to be new baronies, elevating the local commanders to nobility as well. Hundreds of small baronies were born overnight, much
to the ire of the older families who had survived the Unification with their power intact.”

  The guard captain studied Landon with respect. “That’s exactly right. Even today most of them don’t look on the border lords as fellows. But you see,” he redirected at Marik, “why our barony has so few fighting men.”

  “Yeah,” Marik agreed. “If you only have three towns, you don’t have much to draw from.”

  “I am on my way to Kingshome to see how many extra swords my lord can afford. I know I’m racing representatives from every other western baron to your town. I thought, if you were riding out, that you could tell me if any are left to be hired.”

  “Ordinarily I would tell you not to worry,” Landon said. “Normally we don’t receive our first offers for contracts until the second half of winter. Summer is barely half over.”

  “I’ll have to take my chances. We don’t have an abundance of coin to spend, but we’ll find as much as we can. The other border barons are in the same stewpot. With them all contracting at the same time…”

  “Yeah,” Kerwin mused. “The whole band might suddenly be unavailable before we so much as get around to our hiring trials.” He folded his arms at the thought of what the next season would be like for the mercenaries remaining in the band.

  “We’re heading home,” Marik stated, glancing at Landon, relieved to see the man nod. “You want to join us on the road?”

  Riley agreed. “We would be riding side-by-side anyway. We can trade information. You about your band, me about what I know of the trouble.”

  They all decided that sounded fine. When the food arrived, Riley’s two guardsmen joined them at their table. Dinner passed smoothly as the trained fighters conversed, their profession a bond between them despite having never before met. Marik enjoyed the evening, though throughout new worries concerning the future were born in the dark recesses of his mind.

  * * * * *

  Gray rainfall stole away the world’s gradual lightening next dawn. Not until the sun rose high nearly a mark after daybreak did its light penetrate the underwater town of Arthington. Fast-moving rivulets flooded the roadsides, the road centers having been built-up slightly higher for exactly this purpose. Marik would have cast a vote in favor of staying over the day in the farm town. Yes, the band’s leaders wanted contractors to return directly upon completion of their contracts, but weather such as what assaulted them certainly justified a minor delay.

  Except Riley’s need to speedily reach the town outweighed their considerations. Faced with both of these prods, it struck Marik as callous to let the guard captain ride on alone while they warmed their bones by the inn’s hearth, especially after a companionable evening and the accepted decision to travel together. What sort of image would that project to potential clients looking to hire their swords? Marik could imagine Torrence’s reaction if he cast a stain over the band’s reputation.

  He bit back his feelings as they saddled their mounts. Cold seeped through the stable’s plank board walls, searching out any warmth it could enshroud in its clammy, damp cloak.

  The riders’ own cloaks received special attention. When they rode through the open stable doors into the wet, the seven men were spectral entities, wrapped tight in waterproof cloth, hoods and gloves leaving nothing uncovered save their eyes peering through narrow gaps in the taunt fabric. They appeared as the wandering wraiths that populated the Wintereve stories of Marik’s childhood, or perhaps as the tragically diseased, concealing their decaying flesh from the eyes of the healthy.

  His horse balked. It wished to venture into the cold rain even less than its rider. Marik tugged the reins to prevent it from turning its head, kicking the willful beast in its sides to force the issue.

  Conversation lapsed on the Southern Road. The continuous drumming of raindrops striking hard against the roadbed, beating the trees and plunging into the unabsorbed water as forcefully as hailstones precluded talk unless they shouted at topmost range. None felt motivated enough by their thoughts this morning to make such an effort.

  Few others shared the road. Twice they passed wagons. Each one headed off the road within a quarter-mile, bumping through the water channel to enter a field where obscured shapes could be seen moving about. The local farmers harvested the fruits of their labors, shivering no doubt as they bent to pick carrots or cucumbers or turnips, separating the ripe from the immature vegetables, wondering the whole while if the rain would worsen and damage the yield still in the fields. Other than the two locals, they encountered no one else out in the dreary morning.

  Or encountered none until a candlemark after their departure. A shrill whiney cut through the droning rain. It was instantly followed by a large form materializing through the gray water curtain. Galloping straight at Riley and Landon, who rode to their little group’s fore, ran a mad horse.

  When it closed, the startled men could hear a different cry. This came from a woman being pulled by the wild animal. Her hands were caught in the reins. She trailed beside the horse, dragged through the water, in serious danger from the horse’s pounding hooves.

  The animal veered to the side to avoid their intrusion on its path. It ran into a small clearing between large tree stands that flanked the road. On the ground the woman’s cries were muffled when she bounced through the overflow channel. Her body rocked upward like a leaping trout when she struck bumps and plunged back into the shallow water head first. Without slowing noticeably, the horse ran into the clearing. A choking gag drifted to their ears from the sodden lady.

  Riley and Landon both shouted. They spurred their mounts after as one. The others followed, watery sprays sheeting outward under pounding hooves.

  Marik quickly lost sight of the horse and woman through the gray veil. He lost precious moments fighting his damned intractable mount. It had reached the conclusion that this course of action was beyond its liking. Being forced to trod through the downpour was already asking for more than it felt Marik had the right to, and charging full speed with rain cutting at its eyes and water swelling its nostrils simply crossed the line.

  He lagged back while the others charged, falling into the rearguard position as he fought his mount. It finally accepted its fate and began following, nearly twenty paces behind Riley’s men. Water dripped down his face in a sweaty sheen. Marik, fighting to keep a fierce hold on the reins lest his horse take it for a sign of weakness, shook his head violently in an attempt to clear his eyes when his hood started sending water into them.

  This shifted his gaze to the side long enough to notice the shadowy forms running in fast on their flanks. Men in the rain. His battle instincts flared in alarm.

  From ahead, he heard the sudden cry of men who had walked unawares into an ambush.

  Chapter 24

  Before Marik could reach back to pull his sword free, guttural snarls reached his ears, startlingly close. He jerked his head down at the same instant two large dogs attacked out from the rain. They bit at his mount’s right foreleg. This elicited a shrill scream and a rearing buck he was unprepared for. The motion unseated him. Marik bounced off the horse’s rear and spun hard into the muddy water.

  His mind could think of naught but rolling. During the roll he regained control enough over his body to direct its movements. Where had his mount moved? Putting distance between him and its dancing hooves topped his priorities.

  But not for long. One of the dogs veered from his mount, deciding either by the vicious workings of its animal mind or by lethal training that this fallen man would be a vulnerable target. Marik half-rose, reaching to draw his sword at the same time the dog closed, intent on the kill.

  The canine was from a large breed, the black fur so short it seemed like skin rather than hair. Its muzzle bore brown coloring around the squared head, the only variation in the animal’s color. Tall enough to reach Marik’s waist, the breed could use its powerful muscle to destroy animals several times its size. He had seen this type only once before, accompanying one of the nobles camped
at the Hollister who brought it with him on his hunting forays into the Green Reaches.

  Marik struggled to stand from one knee. The breath had been knocked from him during the fall. His sword fought back against his effort to pull it free and he could spare no precious moments to see what it had caught against. With bloodthirsty force, the dog plowed into him.

  It went for his neck. Marik jerked his head back at the moment of impact. He felt warm saliva flung from the gnashing teeth sting his eyes, felt the canine fangs graze his throat through the tightly wrapped cloak. Though the dog missed, the heavy animal crashed full-long into him and knocked him backward to the ground.

  The dog pressed hard. It was a whirlwind of savage predatory fury. Marik still tumbled to a halt when he felt the powerful teeth biting into his shoulder.

  He wore his mail beneath, which stopped the animal from ripping into flesh. Except it provided no protection against the dog’s jaw as it bore down cruelly. Powerful enough to crush cartilage and fracture bone, it would destroy his shoulder.

  Marik twisted frantically as the dog ground down. He punched at its head with his left hand. The blows went unnoticed by his canine assailant. It growled carnivorously while shaking its head back and forth, worrying at Marik’s shoulder, attempting to break through the thick skin its prey wore.

  Pain lanced through his shoulder as the beast bit harder. Panic flashed through Marik. He howled and flailed at the dog’s head in a desperate attempt to unseat it. One of his errant blows struck the dog’s eye. That finally stung it enough that it let go. It backed a pair of steps, rubbing at its face with one paw.

  Marik denied it time to recover. He turned a half-circle on the sodden ground, spinning on one side so he could kick with a foot. His boot caught the animal full in its ribs. A satisfying squeal emitted from it.

  He brought his foot back to deliver a second blow, except the dog was angry. It stormed forward while Marik lashed out, ignoring the impact as it took the hit. Instead it bit into his leg above the boot. It instantly savaged the waterproofed fabric and tore into his leg.