by Damien Lake
A scream of pain escaped Marik. He struck at the brutal animal, raining blows down on the beast. Several knocked the dog’s head aside long enough to break its grip. It decided to ignore the leg. The dog lunged and slid along Marik’s body like a snake through wet grass.
Marik stopped it before it could tear out his throat. With one hand he grabbed the canine’s neck immediately below the jaw. Try as it might, it could not turn its head enough to savage his arm. Its paws, large, powerful and sharply clawed, beat at his chest.
He caught one in his left hand. The dog on top of him, he kneed it hard in the stomach. Marik shifted his weight when the snapping teeth strove to gore his face. They both fell to the side.
Marik kept his grip hard on the furry paw and neck. He forced the damned animal far enough away that he could knee the dog more firmly in the stomach. The dog yelped, though hardly slowed its hostile snarling. Four times he struck the creature until it finally appeared to feel the blows. It twisted after the last, injured enough to cease clawing his tunic to shreds.
He griped its throat in both hands and rolled further until the dog was under him, its back to the ground. Marik beat its head repeatedly into the earth. Water splashed into his eyes with each throttling thump.
Finally the beast looked stunned. Marik released his hold on the animal. He stood while maintaining a cautious eye on it. His leg throbbed madly from the wound.
His sword came free this time. While he firmed his grip on the wet hilt, the dog regained its feet. Marik slashed at the vicious beast. He cut deeply into its shoulder. It squealed in pain. A second blow to the neck ended the demon dog’s damnable life.
He glanced around in worry at what he might find. No others were nearby. Fighting sounded from the direction they had ridden. With a limp, he shuffled lamely to the site.
The second dog lay still in the downpour. A half dozen steps further revealed the bucking shape of his horse through the aquatic netherworld of the morning. Snapping at its flanks, a third dog large as the first wanted to hamstring the larger animal.
But these dogs had picked the wrong horse to harass. His mount kicked out with both rear hooves and caught the snarling canine squarely on the forehead. Marik watched the dog spin a three-quarter circle through the air, landing face first with its bodyweight bearing down from above. It ceased to move. The horse continued its screaming bucks. Soon the deluge had concealed it again.
Ahead the din of combat suddenly ceased. He hurried as fast as his wounded leg allowed, limping with increasing pain lancing through his leg. A dim figure appeared before him in the slashing grayness. Its definition solidified in a heartbeat when it drew closer.
A man backed toward Marik, unaware of the mercenary to his rear. Marik immediately saw him to be no one he knew.
“Hey!” He hesitate to lash out with his blade. For all he knew, this man had been about an ordinary day’s business when this unforeseen conflict descended on him. Since he was unarmed, Marik refused to make a faulty assumption.
The stranger spun at his voice. Also dressed for the wet weather, characteristics still shone through. Neither a small nor slender man, his cloak-wrapped proportions bespoke a muscled frame rather than the bulging rolls an overweight man would claim. His face had been left open to the rain and revealed a broad span, the angle of his cheek bones hardly existent. This made him appear to have no chin, only a flat line beneath his lips. A squashed pepper of a nose completed his appearance as a brawler.
Marik also noticed he held a weapon after all. In his hand he bore a wooden club. No simple length of branch this. A smoothed length formed the thick grip, the rest carved to lethal effectiveness. The motif looked to be miniature domes like buttons scattered around half-pillars encircling the central rod.
This man spent two heartbeats judging his situation. Marik’s sword rose to a ready position, then the stranger sprinted into the rain. The flight caught Marik completely off-guard.
A second figure quickly dashed forward. Marik instantly refocused on this new shape. It was one of Riley’s men. He helped Marik after learning that the man he’d chased had fled, supporting the mercenary as pain rapidly enveloped his leg.
While he hobbled forward with the guard’s aid, concern filled him with every new scene unfolding when they drew near enough to make them out. Five other dogs lay littered across the ground, dead from sword injuries. Kerwin sat beside one, cradling his left arm as blood dripped down his scalp. Marik prayed the stream’s thinness meant a shallow wound rather than the rain diluting the flow.
Dietrik and Landon both sat further away, each probing gashes on their legs. The archer squatted on his ankles to keep his rear out of the mud while Dietrik leaned against his dead horse, which appeared to have been savaged. A shape coursing back and forth on his vision’s borders resolved itself as Riley, apparently whole. Both of his guardsmen hurried to speak with him. Neither of them looked hurt either.
Marik dropped beside Dietrik, unmindful of the wet ground. “You all right?”
His friend glanced at him. “This was supposed to be the easiest contract we pulled since joining the Kings,” Dietrik replied with a trace of bitterness. “So far I have pierced one arm clean through, gouged the other, and now a scummy mutt nearly devoured my bloody self!” He frowned deeply at his torn breeches. “I ended the last summer’s fighting on a cleaner note than this!”
Kerwin shuffled over to Landon, who nodded at a question lost in the crackling rainfall. Riley’s men split off into the gloom while the captain stopped before Landon.
“My men are keeping a watch but I doubt they’ll bother us any further. Still,” he kicked a dead dog in the head, “I’ve never seen a gang of highwaymen this organized before. Must be a group of refugees who’ve had enough of the rough life.”
“No, captain,” Landon replied. “I seriously doubt these were bandits. I suspect a certain man in Thoenar has a hand in this.”
“What?” Marik blurted. Landon’s statement startled him. That Sestion would attempt this after they had made it clear what the repercussions would be had never occurred to him. A man as smart as he would never be so stupid! Would he?
Kerwin nodded in response to Marik’s surprised inquiry. “Look at these dogs,” he gestured with his good hand before clamping it back to his bleeding head wound. “Dogs aren’t the sole property of the nobility, but certain breeds are harder to come by for the likes of you and me. And these look like pure breeds. The three I can see look nearly identical. I don’t see any other bloodlines messing up the works.”
“Which means they either came from a single litter, or that a person with ties in the right places organized this little event,” Landon finished.
“Or both,” Dietrik added. “A bugger with interest in making sure certain lips remain sealed.”
Riley followed the conversation, his head swiveling to each man delivering his observations. “It sounds like you boys are dug-in the middle of a complicated affair.”
“I am afraid that is the case,” Landon answered. “It is fortunate that you were with us during the assault, though perhaps you might not share the opinion.”
Marik, gazing closer at the guard captain, replied before the soldier could. “You didn’t get injured at all! You must be impressive fighters!”
Riley smiled. It was closer to a grimace than a grin. “Over the past year we’ve had to be ready for anything on the border. We haven’t seen much action, but the stories are enough to make you walk with your guard up, and sleep with your hilt in your hand.”
“We haven’t shown our best face forward, I’m afraid,” Landon sounded apologetic.
The captain laughed. “I didn’t see it for an ambush either until too late. Morven and Gair say they’ve found eight dogs, so if you’re right, they brought a pair for each of you in addition to the men we pushed off.” He gestured over his shoulder with a thumb, causing Marik to note for the first time the still body of a man laying on the soaked ground. “It’s a good thing the
dogs went for the mounts instead of you. Someone must not like you very much.”
He asked the question without actually articulating it. Landon skirted it by saying, “That appears to be the case. Again, we thank you, guard captain. Had you not been present, I fear we would have lost more than our horses.”
The mercenaries collected themselves. They bound their wounds as best they were able. Marik had taken the worst damage. Dietrik sustained scrapes from the canine that had ripped his breeches. Kerwin’s arm bore deep bruises rather than torn skin, his head wound the result of striking a stone when thrown from his mount. Landon’s wounds were clean and shallow.
“We will need to change these as soon as we find shelter,” Dietrik told him for the fourth time. “Wet bandages are not healthy. They seep into the wound and turn it septic.”
“I know,” Marik replied for the fourth time. “You keep telling me.”
Dietrik ignored that, and Marik held back a sigh. There was no use in arguing with his friend. He always got like this when tending a shieldmate’s injuries.
Morven, Gair and Riley spent the time reclaiming the loose horses. Dietrik’s and Landon’s had died under the snapping fangs while the rest fled the nipping teeth biting at their fetlocks. The border barony guards were able to gather their mounts with little trouble, their riders’ familiar presence welcomed by the nervous mounts.
They worked together to flank Kerwin’s horse, closing in from both sides until they sandwiched the mount between them. Gair’s reaching hand seized the dangling reins and soon he led the horse back to the mercenaries.
Marik’s mount, on the other hand, would not be subdued so easily. They found it in the trees, still tossing its head as though the rain were a swarm of stinging flies that persisted in annoying it. When at first they attempted to close, it kicked at them, whirling to bite if they managed to near. It cantered through the trees when they tried to flank it and moved in whatever direction they were not.
Riley finally captured it when the trailing reins caught on a fallen branch. He returned every aggressive gesture with one of his own until the horse reluctantly acquiesced to his wishes. The captain had much to say on the subject when they returned with the ill-tempered beast. Marik heard little of it over the pounding deluge and his own fiery agony.
The mercenaries rode double until they reached the next village, another small farming community by the name of Errinton. A local innkeeper greeted them with surprise at having new guests so early in the day. She ran to fetch the local herbman after quickly studying Marik’s wounds.
Salves were applied to the four Kings. They decided rest for the remaining day would be the best course. Riley offered his regrets but he needed to reach Kingshome with maximum haste. Landon assured him they understood and expressed their gratitude for the third time. With the exception of Marik, who sat in a chair beside a large fire in the common room, they stood in the doorway to wave as the guardsmen rode on.
When their forms faded into the downfall, the three glanced at each other, lips pursed, knowledge alight within their eyes.
* * * * *
Sneezes plagued Marik the remainder of the journey. He took his foul mood out on his mount, seeing no reason the evil beast should suffer any less than he. The horse seemed to be of the mood it had endured their presence long enough anyway without this new encroachment on its wellbeing. It cantered a step to come behind Dietrik. Before it could scalp the smaller man, Marik thumped it between the ears with absent redress.
His leg still ached to the bone where the dog had bitten, leaving tears in the flesh and bruises completely throughout the muscle. He could walk, though prolonged time on his feet made the limb swell with dull pain. Due to this he rode his horse while making it his job to keep it under a semblance of control to assuage the minor guilt from watching his friends travel afoot. Kerwin’s horse took turns bearing the other three as they rotated their time on the mount according to whose wounds troubled them worst at the moment.
The day spent over in Errinton left them with strength enough to resume the road. Their bodies mended beneath various bandages, aided by poultices they received from the herbman. They saw no reason to remain any longer.
That night they had discussed the attack. Suspicions and speculations were all they could base their conclusions on, leaving them nothing in the way of options. “It was a risk to confront the baron,” Landon spoke in a low voice over the table. The common room only contained three such furnishings to seat visitors staying over in the small farming village.
“What else should we have done then?” demanded Marik, pausing when a round of coughing wracked him. He continued while massaging his throat. “Dump his body down one of the sewer grates?”
“Don’t get testy, mate,” Dietrik remonstrated. “Choices were not exactly plentiful that day.”
“I still believe we made the best decision,” Landon affirmed. “But we assumed too much on Sestion’s part. We left too many loose ends lying in the conversation when we spoke.”
“Loose ends he took it in mind to pick up,” Kerwin added. “You wagered on him making a risk assessment of his situation that would convince him to end his interest in us and Hilliard.”
“What’s his problem?” Marik raged, his voice raw. He had contracted a cold from the day’s exposures on top of everything else. “You and I told him what we would do if he made a play like this!”
Landon shrugged. “That we are aware of his black business ventures is enough, I think.”
“Yeah,” Kerwin extrapolated. “I doesn’t matter if you kept quiet about it the rest of your life. People like Sestion, especially noble people, don’t want anybody to know.”
“Then he’ll get what’s coming to him!” Marik decided fervently. It took him a moment to notice the three faces of his friends gazing at him. “What?”
“Think about what happened,” Dietrik explained calmly, with an edge of patronization that grated on Marik’s nerves. “Try to see all the ins and outs of our sudden adventure.”
“Don’t act like my mother, you,” he shot back venomously. He addressed Landon as Dietrik looked startled. “And don’t you spend all night leading me through a garden path just to see if I can do it. I’m not in the mood to waste the time, not when I feel like twelve pounds of horse manure in a ten pound bag.”
Landon kept his composure, stating, “You recall when we spoke with the baron?”
Marik nodded, then grimaced when a stab of pain lanced through both his head and bandaged leg.
“We never declared who we were, only implied we served Hilliard as his personal guard.”
“Which we are! Were!”
He nodded. “Then where did this assault on the road leading away from Spirratta come from? After we left him, he must have set about learning all he could regarding us.”
“So what? What difference does that make?”
“The difference,” Kerwin cut in, “is how he might plan on dealing with the rabble who crossed him. If we were actually Hilliard’s men, or Baron Garroway’s I suppose, Sestion might have left it alone.”
“But we are not,” Dietrik completed the reasoning. “We do not have the protective umbrella extending over us that shields the nobility. We have no ties to anyone with power enough to make crossing swords with them a danger.”
“That still doesn’t change the fact that we’re going to ruin his illegal dealings!” Marik returned.
“Actually it does, mate. Since he knows us to be Crimson Kings, he knows we will not be in or near Spirratta or Thoenar. How will you inform the cityguard in either city of the few deals we know about?”
“And,” Kerwin added, “as soon as he knew we were on the road, I’m certain he rearranged everything connected to him. If we squealed, the guards wouldn’t find anything, then we’d be in hock for falsely accusing an aristocrat. We haven’t been in the cities, so there’s no way we could have kept our finger on how he’s shifted his cards around.”
“But
…” Marik felt lost. “If we’ve lost our hold on him, then why did we bother at all?”
“We bluffed.” Landon stated it simply. “I hoped he would think we were in positions both where we could keep our eyes on him, and have the backing of the Garroway barony for whatever additional blockade it might have presented the likes of him.”
“Seems he has decided to call,” Dietrik said. “I suppose Hilliard’s not out of the kettle yet, then.”
“Don’t count on that one,” Kerwin interjected. “If he’s figured out we never told Hilliard the specifics of who was standing behind the assassination attempts, he might write Hilliard off. After all, he’s back under Duke Tilus’ protection, and there are other ways of changing the duke’s mind that will probably be less work.”
They had kept the truth from Hilliard, leaving him to think they were as mystified as he regarding the last attack. Landon feared the youth would take up a crusade against a fellow noble who had chosen to walk the path of shadows if he learned the truth. If such a time ever arose, they preferred not to be enmeshed in it, so had kept their silence.
“That is working on the assumption that this was not simply an imaginative gang of highway bandits,” Dietrik reminded them.
“The dogs,” Landon thought aloud. “Two for each of us, or specifically for our mounts. They must have known we would be riding and needed a way to negate the advantage our horses afforded us. Instantly killing four animals as large as horses with precision shooting is all but impossible, even with crossbows.”
“And if these were the same bastards,” Kerwin added, “they would know that a simple surprise rush probably wouldn’t work. Not after all our playtime in Thoenar.”
Landon nodded. “Hunting dogs to occupy our horses, except they weren’t counting on Riley upsetting the numbers.” He tapped his finger on the table while mulling his memories of the fight, stopping suddenly with finger raised. “Let’s not forget about that exceptionally skilled lady rider who lured us off the road in the first place.”
