“Yes,” she said, “let’s celebrate. Toast to the end of cold mornings and danger, and clinging to the sides of godforsaken mountains.”
Neither of them moved.
“When we’ve caught our breath.”
They sat in silence for a few moments.
The sound of beating hooves, distant yet growing steadily closer, assailed them. They made themselves small against the eroded stone wall. Each wrapped fingers around the hilt of a weapon. They locked eyes, ready to bolt at the merest signal. Angelika listened. She held up two fingers: a pair of riders neared.
The hoof beats quieted. Angelika and Franziskus tensed, this meant that the riders had stopped. The horsemen were looking for them. They heard a muffled utterance: an instruction, most likely, from one man to the other.
Angelika studied the rows of charcoaled trunks from which the grapevines grew, gauging distances, hoping they were too close together for a horse to navigate. They were not. With the vines themselves scorched away, the rows between trunks gaped disconcertingly wide.
It would do no good to bolt. There was one horseman to chase each of them and nowhere to run where steeds couldn’t follow. They had only the slim hope that the men would give up looking before finding them slouched down against the wall. Angelika cursed herself. It had already happened; she’d been done in by her own stupid greed, after all.
A dozen yards to Angelika’s left, the vineyard wall was broken. A chestnut horse stepped across the breach, a handsome young man perched on its saddle. He wore a Stirland officer’s uniform, soiled in recent battle. For a moment, it seemed as if he would ride on through without noticing the two fugitives pressed against the wall. Then he turned, betraying no surprise, and held his palms up in a gesture of placation.
If it weren’t for the second horseman, his position unknown, Angelika would have thrown her dagger at this one. Instead she relaxed, feigning nonchalance. She stretched her feet out in front of her as if enjoying a casual vineyard picnic. She yawned and stretched. When she was done, her hand had migrated from the knife at her waist to the one in her boot.
Franziskus watched her do this and tried clumsily to play along. The sight of a Stirland officer’s uniform suffused him with guilt and dread.
From his horse, Jonas Rassau smiled. “I thought I might find you here,” he said.
Angelika abruptly straightened herself. Once standing, she saw that the second horseman had ridden up to the other side of the wall. He was directly behind them. The second man, burly, grizzled and bearing shoulder insignia that marked him as a sergeant in a sword company, projected an attitude in sharp and threatening contrast to his superior’s show of bonhomie.
Franziskus warily rose to stand by Angelika’s side.
She concentrated her attention on the officer, who eased his horse closer to her. Franziskus kept the sergeant in his peripheral vision.
“You speak as if we know each other, lieutenant,” said Angelika. She leaned against the wall, cocking her knee forward, placing her boot dagger again within easy reach.
He mimed the doffing of a non-existent hat. “Excuse my rudeness, fraulein. I am Jonas Rassau, first lieutenant of the Gerolsbruch Swordsmen. This is my sergeant,” he said, barely nodding in Emil’s direction. “I am forward, I know, but these are times of war and urgency demands it. I happened to observe the two of you back in that hollow, just now.”
It was Angelika’s policy, when caught red-handed, never to compound her humiliation with ridiculous denials. So she said nothing.
Jonas dismounted, but refrained from moving any nearer. He glanced at her boot-cuff, to let her know he’d seen the dagger there. She shifted positions, taking her hand away from it. She twitched out an unhappy smile.
“I imagine we’re equally acquainted with the penalties the province of Stirland metes out to looters,” he began.
“It is fortunate, then,” Angelika replied, “that I was interrupted before any such crime could be committed.”
Jonas burst out laughing. “A fine answer. Though not one that would hold up before a magistrate. I’ve told you who I am. Perhaps it would be polite to reciprocate.”
Franziskus stepped between them. “I am Franziskus. This is Angelika.”
Jonas ignored him. “Angelika, with so many about to die, unless we strike hard and well against the armies of the damned, I cannot bring myself to care for the dignity of those already killed. I have the authority to subject you to summary justice, but not the will. So the two of you may relax and be at ease.”
Angelika did neither. “What do you want, then?”
Now he edged towards her. “You’re wasting your talents, fraulein. The way you judged the lay of the land, when the halflings chased you. That sort of feel for terrain and tactics is not a skill one acquires by accident.”
“Yet you claim you don’t care that I may have looted the odd body, now and then.”
“If you’ve been in this line of work for a while, you’ve been down in the Blackfire Pass. Haven’t you?”
It occurred to Angelika that she ought to be dissembling, at least a little, until she knew exactly what the officer wanted from her. Overcome by her customary frankness, she went ahead and told the truth anyway: “It is good to be where opportunities are plentiful, and summary justice is not.”
“You know your way around a mountain, then.”
It all became clear, he meant to recruit her. Angelika’s stomach rolled. “Perhaps.” She judged the odds of escape. If she came at him quickly, caught him in the throat with her knife as she passed him, then kept on going, she could…
…get about a dozen yards, at best, before the sergeant rode her down and hacked her apart.
Damn, she thought. Damn. She would have to talk her way out of this.
“You are accustomed to autonomy,” Jonas said, in a silky voice one might use to calm an injured doe. The sun had begun its journey down to the western horizon and its light played flatteringly on his chiselled features. “I understand this. You are unwilling to submit to military discipline.”
“I am, after all, a woman,” Angelika said.
She wasn’t entirely pleased by the evaluating glance she received from Jonas. It was not that she found him unattractive. She had the opposite problem: often she was drawn to men like him, whom she might be better off stabbing.
Thought, it might have been a trick of the light, Jonas appeared to blush. “You are, at that, milady.”
“I said woman, not lady.”
“From these few moments together, I can tell already that you’re better disciplined than most of my unruly sex,” riposted Jonas.
Though far from amused, Angelika laughed. “You want me to go with you into the mountains?”
“My company has been assigned a mission there, and I lack a scout.”
“No sane woman would place herself alone in the wilderness with a company of soldiers.”
“I suspect any man who tried any thing with you would soon face your dagger’s wrath. My men are good men.”
“Your men are soldiers.”
His eyes shone. “The world is ending, Angelika, unless we fight to save it. Every man—and every strong woman—must rise to the call.”
“The world is always threatening to end, yet never seems to follow through.”
Jonas’ face knotted up. “You want pay? I’ll see to it you get pay in excess of your dreams.”
Angelika shrugged, her indifference withering. “Pay? As the Empire burns? I bet your men haven’t been paid in months.”
Franziskus heard scuttling sounds from deeper in the vineyard. The sergeant was still watching him closely; he did not want to alarm the burly man with any sudden movements. He edged sideways, hoping to see what was making the noise. Other members of Jonas’ company, perhaps, lurking in ambush?
“I will see to it, when we’ve done our job, that you are compensated,” said Jonas, spitting out each syllable of that stark last word.
Angelika remained
steadfast in the face of the soldier’s rising anger. In fact, it excited her. Now, even though he was undoubtedly the better fighter, she half-hoped he’d go for his sword, and the two of them could have it out.
Franziskus had seen this look before and, leaving the scrabbling out in the vineyard as the lesser of two threats, moved towards her.
She ignored him, instead remaining fixed on the lieutenant. “Money has abruptly lost its allure for me.”
Jonas took a step back. “Then what do you say to this: you may loot what enemy bodies we find, under my protection, unfettered by the law.”
“You’re fighting Kurgan,” Angelika scoffed. “The wealth they carry typically extends to a bird’s skull and a bag of rocks.”
Franziskus’ head turned; there’d been a blur of movement out among the burned vine-trunks.
“Besides,” Angelika continued, “you happen to have caught me on the day of my retirement.”
Franziskus saw that Jonas was now looking at him, and seemed to have taken notice of his discomfort. Jonas squinted down the vineyard’s rows, where Franziskus had been directing his anxious glances. He appeared to come to a decision, and clapped his hands together.
“Very well,” he said. “As you are a woman, I cannot legally press you into service.” He paused. “Not as I could with this one here, if he seemed useful. You, Franziskus.”
“Yes?” Franziskus unknowingly placed a hand on his thumping chest.
“You’re no particular help as a scout, are you?”
“I have taken a vow to stand by Angelika,” he said.
Jonas seemed puzzled by the indirect response, and by Franziskus in general. Finally he asked, “You’ll not try to persuade her?”
“I would if I thought it possible.”
“Very well,” said Jonas, planting a foot in the stirrup of his saddle. “That is that, then.” He heaved himself onto the back of his horse. He waved to Emil and the two of them rode off, in the direction they’d come from. They seemed to slow just as the crest of a hill cut off Franziskus’ view of the departing riders.
Franziskus sidled up to Angelika and spoke from the side of his mouth. “Someone or something’s lurking just behind those trunks over there. Waiting for them to leave.”
They turned slowly and moved together, as if nothing was wrong, toward the breach in the wall. An angry cry howled through the vineyard.
The three halflings burst out from hiding, spears out-thrust, charging.
Angelika leapt over the wall.
Franziskus hesitated, half reaching for his sword. “They’re only halflings,” he said.
The small one threw a rock. It hit Franziskus in the temple.
Franziskus went down.
CHAPTER SIX
Angelika heard Franziskus’ groan and then the smothered thump of his body as it collapsed to the gravelly vineyard pathway. She turned to see a second fist-sized rock hurtling toward her own head. She ducked and it landed uselessly in the grass behind her. It was the rat-faced halfling who’d thrown it. His two slightly bigger compatriots galloped on prodigious hairy feet toward the prone Franziskus, spears out. Angelika soared back over the wall to grab at Franziskus’ coat. He moaned and rose up onto his elbows. Angelika expected to see a red rivulet running down from his scalp line, but the stone had left his skin unbroken. She tried to pull him to his feet, but he was too dizzy to make his way up.
The halflings were just a few yards away. Angelika had no choice but to stand her ground and defend Franziskus from their steely spearheads. She growled one of her best obscenities and yanked her knife from its belt.
Curran, the leader, boomed out into the lead, bellowing, displaying his yellow back teeth. Deely sprinted to keep up. Pebbles crunched beneath their feet as they charged.
Angelika faked a knife-throw at Deely. The halfling awkwardly ducked, slowing his momentum. Then he stopped to look for the supposed dagger, hoping to pluck it up. Filch was still searching for another suitable rock to hurl, leaving only Curran for Angelika to deal with.
His spear afforded him a substantial reach advantage, but, as a knife-fighter, Angelika was used to getting in close to better-armed opponents.
He closed the distance and came at her with his spear. She waited until he was fully committed to the thrust then slid aside from the blow. Quran’s rushing legs flew into Franziskus’ prone body. The halfling tumbled over him and onto his back, landing on the haft of his spear. A dizzy Franziskus rose up to his knees, then threw his dead-weight on top of the halfling leader. Curran protested and struggled beneath him, limbs working like those of an upended beetle.
Deely rushed at Angelika. Over his shoulder, she could see that Filch had acquired another chunk of stone and was winding up to throw it. It sailed across the vineyard at her. She jogged suddenly sideways, putting Deely in its path. It hit him in the back of the knee, then rolled down to the ground, where it got beneath his foot. Deely tripped and as he fell, Angelika wrenched the spear from his grip. Having no particular desire to kill these absurd assailants, Angelika let her dagger drop point-first into the dirt and then whirled Deely’s spear around, reversing it so she was fighting with its haft. She brought it down like a club above Deely’s ear. He grunted in complaint, then retreated under her blows, protecting his face with his arms.
When it seemed he’d been beaten into submission, she turned to see that Curran had crawled out from under Franziskus. He was reaching down to pick up a heavy object. He lifted it up over his head, and Angelika swore in dismay as she realised that it was a loose chunk of wall masonry about a foot across and four inches thick. Curran raised it up over Franziskus’ head. Franziskus tried to crawl away, but the halfling easily matched him. Angelika dashed his way, slamming into his shoulders. She slid in the pebbly dirt and the rock came down painfully on her shoulder.
She got up and surveyed the state of the opposition: Curran was prone and appeared dazed, while Deely had taken up her abandoned dagger and now hopped toward her with it.
Then a heavy weight was on her back, clawing hands digging into her neck and chest. It was Filch, who’d leapt down onto her from the nearest grape trunk. She ducked down to grab her boot-knife, but his weight overbalanced her and the two of them collapsed in a heap. The little man tightened his hold; he choked the air from her windpipe. She tried to jolt him with her elbows, but missed. Blackness rolled in on her and she lost consciousness.
Angelika jarred awake. She saw blue sky, the ruined vineyard, Franziskus tied up beside her. Curran the halfling had thrown a pail of water onto her, to bring her around. No, it wasn’t water. It was wine. He’d tossed wine in her face. Some of it got into her eyes and stung them. She tasted what little of it remained on her tongue. A vintage of indifferent quality.
“You awake?” Curran asked. Rather redundantly, Angelika thought, as she was already angrily staring at him.
“No, I’m having a dream, in which I’ve been captured by pint-sized idiots,” Angelika replied.
He slapped her with a tiny hand. She smiled. When taken prisoner, her first priority was always the severe annoyance of her captors. Distracted by temper, they would then make blunders, which she could exploit in making an escape. At the very least, they would let useful information slip. Or so the theory went.
Franziskus was already conscious. Like hers, his wrists were bound tightly behind his back with a thin, strong length of silky rope. It was a better quality rope than her adversaries usually bound her with. It was heartening that the legendary halfling love of comfort extended to the imprisonment of their enemies. The beginnings of a bruise mustered itself on Franziskus’ temple, otherwise he seemed ruffled, but uninjured.
Curran poked her shoulder with the butt of his spear. “Stand up!” he ordered. He glanced up; inky clouds invaded the sky from the cold north. “We must get home before nightfall.”
His younger brothers, Deely and especially Filch, hung back from him, a hint of shame in their bearing. These weren’t warriors, they
were rustic village folk. Angelika imagined that this was their first taste of fighting, and that it had simultaneously thrilled and frightened them. If so, they were decent men. It was Curran, who’d caught a whiff of exhilaration from it, who might prove dangerous.
Perversely, this insight impelled Angelika to further antagonise him. “How can I stand when you’ve got me sitting on the ground with my hands tied behind my back?”
“Get her to her feet,” Curran bellowed. Filch and Deely hurried to comply. An awkward waltz ensued, as the two diminutive men pulled at Angelika’s elbows and made themselves her leaning posts. Having learned the technique, they repeated it for Franziskus.
The halflings led their prisoners at spear-point out of the vineyard and through a series of gulleys. The winds whipped up again, their fierce sound mingling with the howling of a distant predator. Curran had his spear at Angelika’s back while Deely covered Franziskus. Filch tagged beside Angelika, skipping excitedly through sheep-shorn grass. “You are an adventurer, aren’t you?” he asked.
Angelika did not respond, so Filch repeated the question.
“Adventurer? I don’t know what that means.”
“Shut it, Filch,” Curran commanded.
Filch was undeterred. “You know. A freebooter. What I mean, is, you’ve been out and done things. Haven’t you?”
“Yes, I get waylaid and choked by halflings. It is quite a glamorous life.”
“I tied those knots around your wrists, you know,” Filch piped.
Angelika tested them again, for his benefit. “And what a splendid job you did.”
Filch beamed. Curran told him to shut it.
The wind gusted, dusting them in ash from the forest fire. The howling seemed closer still.
“It surprises me that we haven’t run into any stray barbarians,” said Angelika.
Curran scanned the horizon, as if expecting some Kurgan to abruptly make themselves known.
“Yes, you’d expect some stragglers to hang back from the main force,” Franziskus agreed. Though Angelika was surely saying it to discomfit their capturers, it was also the truth. It was odd that they’d seen no signs of Chaos since the great battle earlier in the day. Unsettlingly so.
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