Demontech: Onslaught

by David Sherman

  But nothing big or that sounded dangerous slithered across their path, and no chittering treetop dwellers scattered slops in their direction. And Haft heard no cries of cat, detected no sign of followers or ambushers. For all he could tell, he and Spinner were the first human beings to enter that stretch of forest.

  Spinner kept looking downslope, toward the inn’s clearing, seeking a place where they could observe the clearing without being seen. He found a spot where a hut-sized boulder and a large fallen tree trunk were lodged together between two larger trees. From the tree trunk, they had a clear view of the inn, which was almost due west of them, and their horses would be out of sight hobbled behind the boulder. A soft breeze came through this opening in the trees; it wasn’t much of a breeze, but it was enough to disperse the cloud of gnats.

  “I didn’t see any sign of hidden roads coming off the one we just left,” Spinner said when they stopped. “Nor any sign of horse or cart traffic under these trees.”

  “No reason you should,” Haft said.

  “Yes there is,” Spinner said. “Sit down and I’ll tell you all about it.”

  “Do we really have to wait for night before we can go in and kill those fiends?” Haft asked when Spinner finished.

  Spinner slowly nodded. “Before we go in to kill those fiends and free the slaves, we have to have a plan. Do you have a plan?”

  Haft shook his head.

  “Neither do I. Let’s watch below and see what goes on. Then we can make a plan. What we observe today will help us make that plan. Also, we don’t go in until after the troll is put to sleep. And I’d like to know where the troll’s magician lives.”

  “You keep mentioning the troll like you know something about it. Will you tell me about this troll?”

  “See that hut?” Spinner pointed to a small stone outbuilding near a corner of the inn, where they couldn’t see it the previous day. “That’s probably the troll hut. I don’t know how it does it, but a troll under the proper care of a magician makes light.” He remembered how his and Haft’s clothes were clean and warm when they finished their baths the day before. “Sometimes the trolls even make heat. Darkness will favor us when we go in tonight, so we need to wait for the troll to go to sleep. There are other things a troll can do besides make light and heat—some of those things can be dangerous to the unwary. We don’t know what this troll can do other than make light and warm up clothes, so that’s one more reason for us to wait until it goes to sleep before we go back to the inn.”

  “What if it wakes up while we’re there?”

  “It won’t. I think. What I’ve heard is that when a troll is locked in a troll hut, it wakes and sleeps at the bidding of the magician who controls it. We don’t have to worry about it once it’s put to sleep for the night. Not unless we’re there long enough for the magician to come back and wake it again.”

  “You think. I distinctly heard you say ‘I think.’ That means you don’t know.”

  Spinner nodded. “I’ve never seen one. All I know is what I’ve heard.”

  “And you don’t know for certain that what you’ve heard is right.”

  Spinner shrugged.

  The morning sun lit the grounds of the inn before it warmed the ridge side on which they sat. At first the only people they saw on the grounds of the inn were laborers doing chores; there seemed to be four of them, but neither Haft nor Spinner could be certain, as the laborers they saw were never all out at one time and there was no way of knowing if all of them were outside; there might be more inside. Still, before the sun rested its rays on them, a few of the soldiers they’d seen in the common room during the night’s entertainment came out. Some got horses from the stable, others just walked away. Some of the soldiers followed the small road to the northwest, the direction from which Haft and Spinner had come. Others went southeast. Whenever soldiers went southeast, Spinner and Haft worried that they would see where they’d left the road and come looking for them. None ever did.

  It wasn’t until the mid-morning sun was warming their backs that anything odd appeared in the inn’s glade. A merchant, accompanied by a few men in workers’ clothing, walked across the glade to the trees on its southern verge, where there didn’t appear to be a road or any other entrance to the glade. They didn’t walk together, but spread out as they went, entering the forest at wide intervals. A few moments later faint sounds drifted up from within those trees, the neigh of a horse, the jingle of tackle, a creak of leather, a grumble of wheels beginning to turn.

  Spinner and Haft looked at each other.

  “That’s why there weren’t enough horses in the corral,” Spinner said.

  “Or any merchants’ carts about,” Haft added. He slipped off the log and stood in a crouch that kept him out of sight from the inn. “Let’s go take a look at what’s there,” he said.

  Spinner nodded, but didn’t leave his seat on the tree trunk. “You’re right, we need to look over there. But not yet. Let’s wait until we see if any others are going that way any time soon.” Where they sat, he could see the tops of the trees in the valley to the south of the inn. The foliage looked solid; there didn’t seem to be another clearing. Maybe there was a concealed roadway. If there was, they wouldn’t find much when they looked.

  Haft jittered a bit. The waiting they’d already done had him anxious to act. But he had to concede that Spinner might be right about waiting a little longer. “All right.” He sat again. Even though he tried to be quiet and patient, that wasn’t in his character when there was action to be taken; he sat fidgeting. He stopped when another merchant and attendant workmen left the inn by its back entrance and headed to the south side of the glade. He started again when they were gone.

  In a short while the sun was almost directly overhead, and Spinner said, “We should eat.”

  Haft hopped off the tree trunk. “I’ll get the food,” he said, just as Spinner knew he would. Spinner wasn’t hungry; he just wanted to give Haft something to do.

  Several more merchants and their helpers left the inn during the early afternoon, all of them spread out as they walked south to the trees. Each time merchants and helpers disappeared into the southern trees, the faint sounds of horses being harnessed and carts driven off drifted up from the valley. None of the merchants or their helpers returned to the inn. Spinner found that very curious. If he hadn’t heard the sounds of horses being harnessed, he would have thought the merchants and their men were meeting wagons driving past on an unseen road.

  It wasn’t until the dinner hour that anyone came out from under the trees: a merchant, three helpers, and five bound people.

  One of the helpers ran ahead to the inn. He came back out in a moment with a short, bandy-legged man wearing a drab cloak with a cowl pulled over his head. The bandy-legged man moved with a grace and confidence that was a startling contrast to his common-looking clothing and his short stature; he moved as though he should be wearing regal finery. Instead of walking toward the approaching merchant, he and the helper angled toward the fortresslike outbuilding. The merchant with his other helpers and the five prisoners also went toward the outbuilding.

  “New slaves being brought in,” Spinner said. He grabbed Haft’s arm to keep him from rushing off to rescue the new slaves.

  “But we’ve got to do something about this,” Haft grumbled. “We have to free them.”

  “We will. Tonight. I swear.” Spinner had studied the short man as well as he could, but the distance was too great for him to make out anything but his overall shape and the way he carried himself. He was sure he hadn’t seen the man in the common room last night; his form and his confident attitude were too distinctive to be missed. Still, he thought there was something familiar about him. It took a couple of moments for him to realize what it was. “He’s the slavemaster,” he said. “The Golden Girl told me the slavemaster is a Jokapcul swordmaster. That man has the size of a Jokapcul and the movement of a natural swordsman. He has the key to the anklets. We have to find out wher
e his room is.”

  “How are we going to do that?”

  Spinner shook his head; he didn’t have any idea. He wondered if the two of them together could stand up to the man, but he didn’t look forward to finding out. He also wondered where the men-at-arms the Golden Girl had mentioned were—and how many there might be.

  After a few minutes the merchant and his men emerged from the slaveholding building. The helpers rushed ahead, evidently looking forward to the comforts of the inn. The merchant followed more slowly; he was counting money. A few minutes more and the slavemaster came out. He made certain the stout door was firmly barred, then returned to the inn.

  Soon, another merchant emerged from the south side of the forest, again with helpers and slaves. The slavemaster went into the outbuilding with them as well. That merchant was also counting money when he left the slave-holding building. The slavemaster stayed inside. A while later and two merchants with seven helpers and nearly two score slaves came from the forest and went into the outbuilding.

  “I wonder how many slaves are in there,” Spinner said softly.

  “We’ve seen half a hundred or more delivered,” Haft replied.

  “And we didn’t see any leave. There were merchants at the inn last night, they must have brought in slaves yesterday. How many did they bring? They must still be in that building.”

  Haft looked at the building and frowned. Several hundred people would make that building very crowded. He shuddered to think what it must be like inside. “We’ve been watching all day. Nobody has taken in food or brought out slops,” he said.

  “Maybe they don’t feed them. Maybe they make the slaves stay in their own waste.”

  Haft cringed, then grew more resolute. “I look forward to killing these fiends tonight.”

  Spinner nodded but made no comment. He didn’t look forward to the raid, and wouldn’t until he knew how they were going to carry it out. And even then he might not look forward to it.

  The dinner hour came and went. Spinner and Haft ate another cold meal. The road past the inn began to fill with men on foot and horse, locals and soldiers coming to the inn for the evening’s entertainment. Windows lighted up on the inn’s upper floors. Through one on the second floor they saw the slavemaster enter a room. Two men were with him and they wore what were obviously uniforms, though neither Haft nor Spinner recognized the army they represented. Not until the last man in closed the door did the slavemaster take off his cowled cloak. Now they could see his face, even though they still couldn’t make out details. By the color of his skin he was certainly Jokapcul. His garb was utilitarian, the kind of clothing a man would wear if he knew he was going to be outside, perhaps the kind of clothes a man would wear if he expected bloody action.

  “Last night in the common room I saw several men in that uniform,” Spinner said. The uniforms were brown and green, indicating that their army moved in forests and probably hunted brigands. The only distinctive part of the uniforms was orange epaulettes. Spinner thought back, seeking details from his memory. “There were three at one table, two at another. I may have missed some, I don’t know. At least two of them noted our uniforms and saluted us with their flagons.”

  The slavemaster appeared to give his men instructions, then the two bowed and left the room. The slavemaster moved to a part of the room that was out of their sight.

  “Now we can make a plan,” Haft said. “We know where the slavemaster sleeps, we know where to find the key, and we know how to recognize his men-at-arms.”

  Spinner nodded. “Now let’s go and see what there is behind the trees to the south.” He looked at the slave-holding outbuilding. “And after that, take a closer look at that place.”

  CHAPTER

  THIRTEEN

  South of the clearing they found a wagon park skillfully hidden under the trees. All of the underbrush was cleared from an area almost half the size of the inn’s glade. Many of the trees in the park had been felled as well, but they were felled selectively. The trees that were left standing were those whose tops formed the canopy. Anyone looking down on the valley from the ridge sides would see only a continual sea of treetops and never guess at the existence of this park. While the remaining foliage overhead blocked most of the direct sunlight, it was not as dark there as elsewhere under the trees.

  Half a dozen wagons stood horseless side by side between the mouths of two roads that emptied into the park from the south. At least two more roads entered the park—one from the east, one from the west. There were no obvious openings into the park—not even a footpath—from its north side, the direction of the inn. Two corrals held thirty or so horses, another corral was empty. Near the corrals there was a wood-frame building far larger than needed by the one hostler they saw tending the horses; smoke rising from the building’s chimney flowed into an inverted tub, from which radiated an elaborate arrangement of tubes that led the smoke to far places, where it was diffused through the treetops. No pillar of smoke could rise to show a fire below.

  Haft hefted his axe. “We can strike our first blow against the slavers here,” he said softly. They squatted behind bushes left standing at the edge of the clearing, and peered through its branches.

  “No,” Spinner said.

  “Why not? One man, he’d be easy to take.”

  “For several reasons,” Spinner said slowly as he continued to examine the hidden park. “First, more slave traders may yet come before nightfall. They’ll raise an alarm if they don’t find him. They will surely raise an alarm if they find him dead. In either case, if an alarm is sounded too soon, we won’t be able to free the slaves. Second, there are probably more hostlers, maybe even guards, in the building. Third, there may be watch-sprites we haven’t spotted who would see and report us if we enter the clearing.” He paused deep in thought for a moment, and Haft started looking around for any sign of watch-sprites. “And last,” Spinner finally said, “do we really know that a man who is merely caring for horses deserves to die for the crimes of those who own the horses?”

  Haft stopped looking for watch-sprites and looked at Spinner. “If he knows he’s helping slavers, doesn’t that make him guilty as well?”

  “Possibly,” was as much as Spinner would commit himself. Though he thought Haft’s argument had merit, he didn’t feel like discussing the philosophical differences between slave trading and working for slave traders. And he was more interested in freeing the slaves and getting away safely than in killing the helpers. “Or he might be a slave himself and have no choice in the matter. But regardless of his possible guilt, there are too many risks involved in killing that hostler now. I’ve seen enough here.” He scuttled backward.

  A corner of Haft’s mouth twitched at Spinner’s unwillingness to kill this helper of slavers, but he backed off as well. If the hostler was a slave, he shouldn’t be killed.

  They had stayed well inside the forest while making their way from where they’d observed the inn, but while they were examining the hidden park the sun dipped below the western ridge leaving the valley in shadow, even though the sky above was still day blue. Going back, they skirted the edge of the clearing, just inside the trees. They stopped once when they saw a man in the robes of a magician’s apprentice come out of the woods on the west side of the glade.

  The apprentice carried a metal container by a handle on its top. From the way the apprentice tilted to one side as he carried the container, it was obviously heavy. The apprentice went directly to the troll hut, where he put the container down and pulled a large ring of keys from a pocket of his robe. The apprentice unlocked and opened the door, picked up his container, and closed the door behind him when he entered the hut. After a few moments the troll stopped its rumbling and metallic noises came from inside the hut.

  Haft poked Spinner. “Remember? When we were in the bath, you said you thought the troll stopped its rumbling for a short while?”

  Spinner nodded; yes, he remembered very well.

  “Do you think the ap
prentice is feeding the troll?”

  “I don’t know, but I can’t think of what else he might be doing.”

  Shortly, the metallic noises stopped, and a moment later the troll’s rumble began anew. The apprentice came back out and locked the door. His step was much lighter going back to the woods to the west of the glen than when he came in, and he swung the container lightly at his side.

  “Now we know where the magician lives,” Spinner said when the apprentice was out of sight.

  “What good does it do us to know where the magician lives?”

  Spinner merely shook his head. He knew that commanders on military operations always had to know more things than they ever used, simply to make sure there wasn’t something they needed to know or do that they didn’t. Then he grinned and looked at Haft. “It tells us what way not to go when we leave here.”

  Haft grunted. That didn’t sound to him like enough reason to bother with. And it didn’t tell them how far away the magician lived, which he thought might be a worthwhile thing to know; the farther away, the longer it would take the magician to arrive if he decided to investigate what happened later that night.

  No one else was in sight moving about the glade, so Spinner and Haft continued circling close to it. When they reached the spot where the forest came closest to the slave barn, they stopped.

  “We may as well see if we can find out how many are in there,” Haft said.

  Spinner didn’t reply. He was thinking about how to free those slaves later on. He said, “While we’re doing that, we can check the door and find out how securely it’s barred.”

  Haft crouched over, darted from the trees, and ran straight to the back of the slave barn. Spinner followed close behind.

  They hunkered down against the back wall of the barn. Looking up, they made out narrow windows tucked up under the eaves. The stench that filled their nostrils came in the air carried down from those small windows—but it felt as though the fetid aroma oozed through the very walls.