He wanted the steel. He wanted Kadya to return so he could see how much truth there was, if any, to his son’s warning. He was curious about what Siemhouk’s reaction might be.
But during the long days and nights of waiting, he made plans. Whatever the future brought, he meant to be ready for it when it got here.
2
Sellis was a natural tracker, and following the trail the party from the House of Thrace had made was easy. Finding the bodies of the dead guards, stripped and left to rot in the son, had been worrying, but Aric already knew Rieve and her family were in trouble. It was clear what had happened—someone had captured them. Even without the visible trail, Aric would have known whom to blame.
Those raiders from Fort Dunnat.
They’d been humiliated, and many of their number killed, at Myrana’s false ambush site. Seeking revenge for that, they’d been turned away from the village of Yarri, again sustaining heavy losses. Following that battle, they had lingered about the area for several days, doubtless looking for another way to avenge their losses.
Now, obviously having no knowledge of Rieve’s connection to Aric, they had come across a party of nobles. Profit, not revenge, had dictated that they take those nobles captive—in addition to having their forces devastated in two separate battles, they had wasted time that might otherwise have been spent raiding caravans or other, less fortified villages.
Aric had to believe that Corlan had been taken as well, because Corlan’s trail and the families came together, before the point at which they found the soldiers’ bodies.
Where the trail led across rocky patches, or wind had scoured it so clean that not only Sellis could find it, Aric had to rely on his pebble and bowl of water. That led unfailingly to where the trail again became clear, and showed him that, although she remained a captive, she yet lived.
As long as she lived, Aric would rescue her.
If she died, he would kill every raider in the fort, or die trying.
The others were with him. In the first warm blush of morning, he had explained what the pebble had shown him the night before.
“What are we waiting for?” Myrana asked.
“It’ll take us out of our way,” Aric said. “Away from Nibenay. If Kadya reaches the city first—”
“We’ve had plenty of delays,” Sellis said. “Do we know she’s not already there?”
“She wasn’t when Corlan left it, but that’s the last we know.”
“Then we might rush there for naught, while your friends suffer at the hands of those damnable raiders.”
“That’s true.”
“Even when we get to Nibenay,” Amoni added, “we might not be able to do anything.”
“Also true,” Aric said.
“And you said this woman, your friend’s grandmother, works preserving magic.”
“That’s what Rieve said.”
“Well, we’ll need sorcerers on our side, if we hope to best Kadya with magic, right?”
“Yes.”
Myrana saw where Amoni was leading, and picked up the thread. “So we help them first. Then we all go to Nibenay together and deal with this templar and her demon friend.”
“I don’t know that they’ll want to go back to Nibenay,” Aric reminded them. “They were anxious to put distance between themselves and the city.”
“If we rescue them, and we tell them what’s at stake?” Sellis asked. “Surely they’ll take the chance.”
Not everyone’s a hero, Aric was about to say. But the words tangled on his tongue. If he spoke them, he would be calling himself and his friends heroes, and he didn’t think of them that way. He only thought they were trying to do what needed to be done—that they really didn’t have a choice in the matter.
Then again, perhaps that’s what all heroes thought.
At any rate, he didn’t want to give the thought voice, for fear of sounding ridiculously self-important. “Let’s go, then. After my friends, even if the trail leads to the raiders’ fort itself.”
3
It did.
The fort butted up against a rocky cliff, its walls built from the same dark rock, so they didn’t see it until they were almost upon it. Guards had been posted up on the cliff, and more on towers abutting the walls. The companions halted when they realized they’d found it, themselves ducking behind some good-sized rocks so they wouldn’t be seen.
“How we going to get in there?” Mazzax asked. “Knock on gates?”
“I think we’ll have to be sneakier than that,” Amoni said.
“Sneaky is good,” Aric agreed. “But we don’t even know where inside that fort they’re holding Rieve and her family. There aren’t nearly enough of us to simply invade the fort and find them.”
“But we’re us,” Ruhm said.
“Yes, Ruhm, we are,” Aric said. “We’ve been lucky so far. Maybe more than just lucky, maybe we’re actually good at this sort of thing. But six against however many raiders are in there … the odds aren’t with us.”
“Fewer now than there were before,” Myrana pointed out.
“That’ll work in our favor.” Aric stole another glance at the fort, wishing he could see through its walls.
But he could! In a way, at least. “Hold on, perhaps we can get a view of the inside after all.” He took pebble and bowl from his pouch, poured some water in, dropped the pebble into the water. By now it was routine. The pebble slid immediately across the bottom to a point nearest the fort. Aric waited until the pebble’s surface had grown cloudy, then he took it from the water and held it toward the sun.
Rieve was inside a building. The mark on her face had faded, leaving only a faint bruise. The rope was no longer around her neck. But she was unhappy. Worry ridged her brow, tugged down the corners of her mouth. Aric wanted to tell her to have faith, that he was on his way, but she couldn’t hear him, and even if she could, he didn’t know that they would be able to successfully breach the fort’s walls.
As he watched, she paced before a barred window. Aric brought the stone closer to his eye, looking for anything visible beyond the window. He saw a building with a patch of orange lichen on one wall, in a shape that reminded him of a dragon’s wing. Past that he saw the cliff that loomed behind the fort.
“They’re near the back,” he said. “Close to the cliffs. Beside the building they’re in is another one, with lichen on it forming a shape almost like a scalloped wing.”
“You see all that in the rock?” Mazzax asked.
“Yes, it’s clear as day.”
“Some rock,” Ruhm said.
“It is that.” Aric dried it on his shirt and put it away, then drank the water from the bowl. No sense in wasting water. “Now all we need to do is figure out how to get into the back of the fort.”
“I might have an idea about that,” Sellis said. “It’ll take some doing …”
4
Sellis and Myrana walked toward the fort’s front gate. They went slow, Myrana’s bad leg apparently giving her a great deal of trouble. At least, that was the effect she was going for. The truth was, these last weeks had been hard on her, and her leg was in considerable pain much of the time, so it wasn’t hard to fake.
The guards atop the cliff shouted an alarm. From that point on, the guards in the towers watched them. She couldn’t imagine they were an interesting sight. Had she been alone, they might not even have bothered keeping an eye on her. But because she was with a man who was obviously a warrior, with twin swords jutting out above his shoulders, they didn’t dare not watch.
When they were within hailing distance, one of the tower guards did just that. “You’d best turn around!” she called. “We’ve no interest in visitors here, nor patience for ‘em!”
“We have business,” Sellis replied, and kept walking. Slowly. Keeping pace with Myrana, who struggled more with every step.
“What sort of business?” the guard demanded.
“The profitable sort,” Sellis said.
The g
uard kept asking questions, and Sellis kept answering them with statements that only led to yet more questions. All the time, they grew nearer, and kept the attention of the tower guards and cliff guards riveted. Who are these people? they must have wondered. Where did they come from? And on foot? Are they mad?
Sellis continued to evade giving any direct answers until they stood directly outside the front gate. “We’ve come to buy your prisoners,” he said then.
“We have no prisoners,” a guard said.
“I think you do.” Sellis took off a bag that had been slung to his back this whole time, and opened its top. The gold inside it fairly glowed in the sunlight.
Of course, the bag didn’t exist, and neither did the gold. They were both magical illusions Sellis had created.
But the raiders didn’t know that. Any who had become disenchanted with the spectacle of their approach were once more riveted to the scene.
“You have four men and three women, of a noble family,” Sellis said. “You’re holding them for ransom, presumably. We’ve come to pay that ransom.”
“What’s to keep us from killing you, taking your gold, and keeping the captives?”
“Us,” Sellis said.
That answer earned a roar of laughter from the assembled raiders. “You?” one asked. “Against all of us?”
“You could try us,” Myrana said. “Perhaps you’ll have better luck than the last army we fought.”
More laughter. The taunts continued, but no raiders ventured through the gate. Myrana and Sellis held their ground, trying to negotiate for the Thrace family’s release with people who had no interest in negotiating.
Which, after all, was the whole idea.
The others, Aric, Ruhm, Amoni and Mazzax, had left their hiding place first, striking far to the west and then working their way back along the base of the cliffs. There, the guards on top of the bluff would have to lean out to see them. Tower guards might have spotted them, but by the time they were in view of the towers, everyone was watching the strange couple’s slow procession toward the gate.
5
In this way, moving quietly, the four companions made it to the base of the wall, where it abutted the cliff’s face. The hard part would be getting over the wall. Since they had no ladder or means of making one, they scaled the cliff, knowing they would be visible from the towers as they did. Myrana and Sellis kept the raiders occupied, though, and none so much as glanced their way. From his position on the cliff, Aric studied the buildings nearby until he spotted the one with the lichen patch he had seen in the pebble. Then he pointed out the building next to it, in the right place for the view through Rieve’s window.
“That’s the one we want,” he said quietly. When they had all identified the right one, they dropped one by one over the wall and into the fortress.
Aric had barely touched down when he heard a voice shout, “That’s him!”
One of the raiders who had been among those who first captured them was glaring at him and drawing a steel short sword. A new cut traced a line from the raider’s left shoulder almost to his belly; earned in the battle against the thri-kreen or the villagers, Aric guessed, and he was anxious to taste vengeance for it. Another raider had been walking with him, carrying a pike. Both raiders ran toward Aric, shouting an alarm as they came.
This wouldn’t be as easy as Aric had hoped.
At least his new sword would finally be tested.
He whipped it from its scabbard. The blade sung in the air as Aric slashed back and forth, enjoying the feel of it. The swordsman reached Aric first, running with his sword held out before him as if Aric would just stand there and let it pierce his chest.
Instead, Aric waited until the raider was in mid-stride, not quite balanced, and swung his blade into his, from the side. The blow staggered the man. Aric followed up with a lunging thrust, which the man only just parried. The raider took a couple of steps forward, more careful ones now, as Aric recovered from the lunge. The blades clashed together, lightly, each man feeling for the other’s weaknesses. The raider was strong, but so was Aric. And Aric’s blade was a full foot longer than the other man’s.
The other raider tried to intervene with his pike, but Ruhm’s club bashed the weapon away and then, on the return swing, crushed the raider’s skull. He wouldn’t be a problem anymore.
But more raiders were on the way, summoned by the shouts. Ruhm and Mazzax took up positions at the end of a building, ready to fight anyone who came from the front of the fort. Amoni went to the other end, in case raiders came that way.
The swordsman was better than he had seemed at first. Even with his short blade, he parried Aric’s attacks and kept up his own. Two more raiders came up behind him, taking their turns thrusting at Aric and swinging an axe at him, and then Aric was holding off three. They grunted and cursed, and he ignored them as best he could. The raiders had only to delay them long enough, and they would be surrounded, with no hope of getting Rieve and her family out safely.
If not for that urgency weighing on him, Aric would have enjoyed the contest. He had to end it quickly, though, or lose his life here in a raiders’ fort. He could hear his friends engaged with other opponents, so there would be no help from those quarters.
“Rieve,” he shouted, since their presence had already been given away. “Rieve, it’s Aric!”
So distracted, the first raider landed a blow against him. The short sword raked across his left thigh, drawing blood. Sudden, searing pain brought Aric back into the fight. He backstepped, brought his blade down against the other man’s. He slashed at the raider’s collarbone, but his move was blocked, and the two blades ground together, frozen in place for the moment, the other two closing in for the kill.
First blood drawn, and it was his own. Not exactly the progress he hoped for.
6
When we’re free,” Rieve was saying as she paced a groove in the dirt floor, “I want to raise an army. I want to come back here and dismantle this place, stone by stone. People like this, these raiders, have no place in a decent world.”
Corlan sat on the floor, his back against a corner, knees up with his arms resting on them. He lifted his head. “You might have forgotten where we are,” he said. “I live on Athas, in the city-state of Nibenay, so I’m not sure what a decent world is.”
“You know what I mean!” Rieve shot back. “We’ll never have a decent world if people are allowed to behave like this.”
Her grandmother patted Rieve’s shoulder. The old woman’s eyes were filled with that calm acceptance that never failed to lighten Rieve’s mood. Her face was lined, her hair silver, but her back was straight, her jaw firm, and she remained a rock of solidity in Rieve’s often turbulent life. “This is difficult for us all,” she said. “Nobody likes to be victimized like this, to be held against our will.”
“How do you stay so calm, then?” Rieve asked. “Why aren’t you spitting mad?”
“I suppose I just try to take the longer view. The more spiritual view, in some ways. Things happen in life that are beyond our control. Many of them are good things, and others bad, or at least that’s how we perceive them at the time. Sometimes, later on in life, our view changes, and we realize those things we thought were awful might not have been so bad after all. Perhaps they showed us new directions to grow in. Perhaps they slowed down the pace of life and allowed us to examine our inner selves in some new way.”
“That makes some sense, I suppose. But this? How can this be anything but horrible? Waiting out the rest of our lives in some fortress prison until these thugs decide to kill us? That can’t be good.”
“I’m not saying it is, necessarily. Certainly it’s bad from our immediate viewpoint. And it’s possible, of course, that you’ll do exactly what you say—get out of here, put together an army, and come back to wipe this place off the planet. That would be a good result from a bad situation, don’t you see? The pain you’re undergoing now would lead, eventually, to you doing something for th
e betterment of everyone.”
Rieve hadn’t thought of things that way, had given no consideration to the idea that anything good could grow from this experience. Of course, for that to happen, first she had to get free somehow. Then she had to be able to access the family fortune, or earn a new one of her own.
But even that, she realized, would be something she had never imagined doing, that she probably wouldn’t have thought of, had it not been for the raiders. To amass a fortune big enough to hire an army, she would have to provide some service or goods that others wanted to buy. In doing so, she would be filling some need.
Grandmother was right. Good could grow from the worst situations, if one only looked at things the right way.
It didn’t make her glad they had been taken captive, but it made her not hate the experience with quite the white fury she had just minutes ago. Maybe there was something she could learn, about herself, her family, Corlan, or the world. She vowed to keep her heart open to that possibility, to observe and take in events as they occurred, rather than waste all her energy resenting them.
She was about to thank Grandmother for the advice when she heard muffled cries outside. “Something’s going on out there,” Corlan said, springing up from his corner and rushing to the window. Rieve joined him there, gripping flaking, rusted iron bars and straining to hear. There were more shouts, then what sounded like fighting, the clang of steel against steel.
City Under the Sand: A Dark Sun Novel (Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Sun) Page 31
