by Cindy Dees
During one of their infrequent rest stops, Raina muttered in his general direction, “Did I hear you say the Sleeping King was guarded by the Boki? And the Boki have been trying to collect the pieces of that thing on your chest for a long time, right? Do you suppose Bloodroot knows something about the Sleeping King?”
She had the energy to think, let alone reason? He mumbled, “If he does, he hasn’t shared it with me.”
“Can you ask him?” she pressed.
“No.” He added, “I’d hate to think I’ve been carrying around the location of the king all this time inside my head.” Did you hear that, you old fossil? If you know, you’d better show me.
“Who else could know something, then?” Raina asked reasonably.
He huffed. “I don’t know. I don’t know anything. Except that my father and his friends nearly found the king a long time ago, and he was in this forest, guarded by Boki.”
Cicero called for them to move out, and Raina and Will’s conversation ended. But at the next rest break, Raina picked up where she’d left off. Persistent girl.
“If they wished to see him woken and could do it themselves, they already would have. Which means one of two things then. Either they do not wish him woken, or someone else needs to wake him.”
“But which?” Will muttered.
She shrugged. “Only way to know is to ask them, I suppose.”
He snorted. “As if they would answer a bunch of pinkskin adventurers like us.”
“Speak for yourself!” Sha’Li hissed.
Finally, a little before dawn, Cicero called a halt by raising a closed fist. The group stopped gratefully, the healers flopping immediately to the ground. Will would have done the same, except Cicero gestured him, Eben, and Sha’Li close.
Cicero asked the jann, “Are we far enough from the Imperials to take a few hours’ rest?”
Eben considered briefly. “Aye, but we’ve another problem. If I haven’t gotten myself all turned around in the course of our flight, we’ve run right down the throat of the Boki force.”
Will stared in horror at the jann. “You’re kidding.”
Cicero replied grimly, “’Twas that or be taken by the Imperials. They were spreading out in a line behind us and flanking us on each side. I deemed a swift and honorable death in combat against Boki preferable to what Anton Constantine would do to us.”
Eben shrugged. “I cannot argue with that.”
Will demanded, “So what now? We hand ourselves over to the Boki and give up?”
“Keep your voice down,” Cicero bit out low. “Now we hide. We stay absolutely still and silent and hope the battle passes us by.”
“That’s not much of a plan—” Will started hotly.
Eben cut him off. “Nay, but it is all we have. Rosana and Raina are done in. They can’t run another step. Frankly, it is miraculous they didn’t both collapse hours ago.”
Cicero pointed at what Will thought to be the north. “The Boki are that way. Let me check that way”—the elf pointed east—“for a hiding place.”
The others nodded, then as one looked at him. Will frowned. Since when had they appointed Cicero leader of this ill-fated expedition? Will took a deep breath and said as calmly as he could, “Let’s do it.”
Cicero moved off through the trees. For his part, Will slid to the ground beside the nearest tree, leaning back against its trunk in utter exhaustion. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea to just give up now and turn themselves over to the Boki. At least they might be able to talk their captors into giving them a hot meal before they were slaughtered or sold into slavery. He closed his eyes, idly envisioning the Boki’s shock if he strolled into their camp and roared in tree-speak for a bowl of stew.
Actually …
No.
Nonetheless, the idea did have a certain merit.…
* * *
Leland waited a few paces behind Anton, well to the back of the formation. It was exceedingly strange being so far from the front line as this. Leland always led his men in person. Not so with Anton, and certainly not with this motley force of cutthroats and assassins.
They’d only caught a fleeting glimpse of a few Boki warriors through the trees, but then they’d disappeared.
“Where are they?” Anton growled.
A good question. A half-dozen scouts had been sent out in various directions, but none had sent a signal back that the enemy was in sight.
Without warning, a signal came from dead ahead. The enemy was moving left to right parallel to Anton’s forces at a high rate of speed. In quick succession the next two scouts in line reported the same thing, as the Boki force apparently raced east.
“Hah!” Anton crowed. “They have learned the identity of their attacker and flee before me like spineless cowards!”
Leland frowned. The Boki were neither spineless nor cowards. In fact, tradition had it that no Boki warrior fled from any fight. Ever. They would die rather than retreat. He would bet his entire holdings and everything in them that the Boki did not flee them now. Which begged the question, what exactly were the Boki doing?
And then it hit him.
Boki scouting parties had been out here well before Anton’s force arrived. Which meant they were already looking for something. Or someone. Like a small party of adventurers bent on disturbing the tomb of their sleeping king, mayhap?
The Boki would never flee from Imperial soldiers, but they would most certainly take off in hot pursuit of their prey. Which meant …
… The Boki must have spotted Kendrick and his companions.
Panic all but drove Leland to his feet shouting for his men to go after the Boki and engage them—anything to divert them or at least slow them down. At the last moment, he restrained the impulse.
Instead, he leaned toward Anton and murmured, “If the Boki do, indeed, flee us, then they give us their unprotected backs. Do we attack, my lord?”
Anton glanced sharply at him, clearly surprised at the aggressive suggestion from his reluctant landsgrave. “Aye. Sound the call. We give chase. Engage the Boki and kill them all!”
Leland rose from his position, sword raised high, and shouted the order to his men. He prayed no one died needlessly in this maneuver, but what choice did he have? His son and the others, Ty’s boy and the arch-mage girl, must live. They must escape the Boki and be given a chance to complete their mission. The fate of the colonies and all who lived there might very well rest upon their shoulders.
As Leland expected, finding and engaging the rear guard of the Boki was more difficult than it sounded. The forested terrain made a traditional battle impossible. This would be an extended skirmish for the most part. Command and control was going to be a nightmare as Anton’s troops scattered through the woods.
Worse, the orcs were on their home turf and they were strong and fast. Plus, they didn’t seem interested in fighting Anton’s men in a major, force-on-force battle. Nonetheless, the soldiers managed to force a few Boki to turn and fight.
Much more in the manner Leland was accustomed to from them, the Boki stragglers fought furiously and to the death. Suspicion settled in his gut that they were acting as sacrificial lambs to delay Anton. Even when the Boki were swarmed by a dozen men at a time, it still took long and costly minutes to kill each one. Leland could only pray that somehow Kendrick and his companions had managed to avoid the rushing Boki force behind them.
* * *
Will’s better judgment was still managing to overrule his wilder impulses by a whisker when Cicero called a halt in the thicket the kindari had found for them. It was Will’s turn to take first watch and he settled in the shadow of a giant hickory tree, careful to make sure he was not comfortable enough to drift off to sleep. He could swear Adrick’s staff, made of hickory heartwood, warmed a little in his hand.
The woods were tense around him. The night creatures did not go about their usual business, and alarm calls were more prevalent than mating calls among the frogs and night birds. Bloodroot’s ext
raordinary ability to read the sounds of the forest might be absent, but Will had learned enough from the tree spirit to know the enemy was close. Very close.
What was he doing out here? He was going to die. And for what? A legend? What could anyone do against the might of Koth? Even if this sleeping king did exist, what could one man do against so great an enemy?
He had no business running around out here with armies and orcs. He wasn’t skilled enough or experienced enough to survive, let alone prevail against such foes. What had Ty been thinking to send him on this quest? It was too much to place upon the shoulders of a youth his age. Either his father had thought too highly of him or else Ty thought so little of his only son that he’d been willing to sacrifice him to a mad dream. Will reflected bitterly that it was most likely the latter.
Snap.
Will jolted to full alert, watching intently in the direction the sound had come from. He commenced counting in his head. When he’d reached thirty, he heard a faint rustle of leaves. And another.
He eased backward, moving arhythmically. Step. Pause. Step-drag-step. Long pause. Gliding around the far side of the giant tree trunk at his back, he placed the hickory between himself and whoever was out there.
The irony of being alone in the woods at night in the lee of an ancient hickory while Boki roamed the forest was not lost on him. The more things changed, the more they stayed the same. He eased toward his companions, clicking and chirring under his breath to mimic the insects around him. Odd. He’d never learned how to do that. Maybe Bloodroot was still there after all, waiting and watching.
The others lay in a tight cluster under a spreading patch of broad-leafed muscat vines. Will tapped everyone’s feet and they all roused quickly, alarmed.
“Anton’s army comes,” he breathed. How he knew it was Imperials and not Boki he had no idea, but didn’t question it.
Sha’Li complained, “Why cannot we hide here, and for it to pass we wait? Then south we can head and far away from all this go.”
He echoed her sentiment entirely, but answered grimly, “If Anton catches us, he’ll kill us all. Slowly and permanently.”
The lizardman girl grumbled, “A better chance we’d stand by far of living if the Boki caught us. Into their camp we should walk and hand ourselves over. At least a decent night’s sleep we’d get before into slavery they sell us.”
Will stared hard at her. “Actually, that’s just what I was considering doing.”
“Are you insane?” Rosana cried under her breath.
Eben waved her to silence. “We have to move. Whoever’s out there draws near.”
The party eased into the night. They crept along for several minutes in silence, pausing every few minutes so Cicero could slip away behind them and check for pursuers.
Rosana picked up their previous conversation exactly where she’d left off, declaring in a whisper, “Are you mad to consider giving yourself to the Boki?”
“No. I think they’ll recognize the spirit of Bloodroot and want to talk to us about where I got the disk.”
Sha’Li hissed, “Tell them you must not!”
He snapped back, “I think we have no choice but to ask the Boki for help. And unless I tell them about Bloodroot, they will kill us all!”
“What help do you seek from the orcs? Help saving us from Anton?” Raina asked, “Or help with our quest?”
“Both,” Will answered grimly.
She stared at him long and hard. “Sir Leland will help us. And there are others who would as well.”
Will frowned. “But Hyland and the others do not know where to find the Sleeping King. I think the Boki do.”
“Are you sure?” Raina asked doubtfully.
Will met her gaze solemnly. “Not at all. But I think going to the Boki is the only way for us to get out of this alive.”
She took a deep breath and exhaled heavily. “I think you are right.”
Rosana looked back and forth between the two of them desperately. “You can’t be serious! We can’t just march into a Boki camp. It is suicide!”
“No more suicidal than staying out here and waiting for Anton’s men to find and slaughter us.”
Rosana’s hand slipped into Will’s and grasped his fingers painfully tight, making her opinion of the whole idea crystal clear.
Eben spoke up. “I hate to say it, but I have to agree with Will. Never thought I’d consider surrendering to the likes of orcs, but better that than Anton’s assassins getting their blades on our throats.”
Cicero shrugged. “I’ve escaped orcs before. I can do it again.”
Sha’Li hissed, “For sheep is slavery. Not for my kind!”
Eben grunted, “Everybody knows your kind make terrible slaves. You’re too surly and dense to train properly to any but the meanest task.”
Sha’Li’s scales lifted. “Stupid you call me?”
“No more arguments,” Cicero whispered. “Boki are fanning out from the north to our east and west flanks, and Anton’s men are matching the maneuver from the south. We’re surrounded and trapped. We must choose an army to hand ourselves over to, and soon.”
Will replied, “I believe we are agreed. The orcs it is.”
Cicero stood. “All right then. To the Boki. Follow me.”
Stealthily, they eased northward. Will was concerned about his inability to speak or understand the heavy accent of the orcs. He hoped one of the Boki would speak clearly enough for them to communicate.
Twice they heard the sounds of skirmishing and veered away from the shouts and clanging. Cicero started a quartering pattern, zigzagging left and right as they maintained their generally northerly course in an attempt to locate the Boki encampment. They could use a little dose of Bloodroot’s familiarity with this place long about now, but the tree spirit remained frustratingly silent within Will.
After maybe an hour of fruitless searching, Cicero lifted his head suddenly. Took a long sniff, turned, and headed unerringly to the north and east. Will’s pulse spiked. Last chance to back out of this madness.
A faint, familiar odor tickled his nostrils unpleasantly. His impulse was to duck and hide. To creep away. To save himself and the others. But he fought the impulse. Resolutely forced one foot in front of the other. Ever since that night so long ago in Hickory Hollow, his path had been leading him to this—a direct confrontation with the monsters who’d killed his parents and slaughtered everyone in his village. It was as it should be. A fitting end to his long journey.
But he was still scared stiff.
Please let them run not into a club-happy Boki perimeter guard who swung first and asked questions later. Please let this scheme not have been a colossal mistake.
Whether some greater being heard Will’s plea or whether it was nothing more than dumb luck, they managed to reach the edge of a medium-sized clearing filled with crude Boki shelters with their heads still attached to their bodies.
Cicero glanced over at him questioningly and Will nodded back. He turned to face Rosana. He did not know what to say to her. So instead, he pulled her close and kissed her hard and quick, full on the mouth. And praise the stars, she kissed him back.
He let go of her and stepped out into the moonlight.
Great galloping stars in heaven. The encampment sprawling before him must house hundreds of Boki warriors. Anton thought to defeat this army? Will shuddered to picture the size of the force Anton must have brought with him.
Within seconds, a half-dozen orc guards had spotted Will. A shout went up, and within a few more seconds the entire camp was on full battle alert.
He murmured over his shoulder, “I think it is safe to say we’ve got their attention.” He felt the others move up behind him in a tight cluster. Will lifted his hands away from his sides, raising them slowly to clasp them behind his head lest the orcs think he might cast magic. He walked boldly toward the Boki. Might as well not earn the beasts’ contempt before they killed him.
Shock poured through him as Raina moved up b
eside him, head held high. She strode beside him like she was the Emperor’s daughter herself. Brave girl. That, or incredibly foolish.
“Let’s end this,” she muttered. “Let’s find this king and wake him up. I’ve had enough of these games.”
Will snorted. “Me, too.”
She replied, “Head high, Will. You were chosen by a great tree lord for this quest.”
He pictured his father that last night, a great warrior in command of the battle, and did his best to channel Ty. He squared his shoulders and walked boldly beside Raina toward he knew not what.
“Soo-ren-duhh, hoo-mans!”
He refrained from rolling his eyes. As if it weren’t already obvious that surrendering was precisely what they were doing. He muttered down at his chest, “Okay, old man. Tell them who you are.”
Nothing.
Two of the Boki charged, clubs drawn, and Will fought with every ounce of his being not to run screaming from them. Visions of that night in Hickory Hollow, his first sight of these monsters bursting out of the brush, washed over him. The horror of it was fresh again. The terror. The fear for his family. The blood—
“We’re all going to die,” Rosana wailed from behind them.
CHAPTER
25
Leland tried twice to talk Anton out of taking the fight to the main Boki force, which had indeed been spotted to the north of their position. He failed, of course. A person would think Anton had learned from past mistakes. After all, no one had ever accused the man of being thick.
But Anton wanted no part of Leland’s advice. Frustrated, he returned to the front lines—a thinly stretched formation that couldn’t possibly withstand a direct assault by the Boki—and continued hunting the Boki rear guard.
Anton was being lured into a trap as surely as the sun would rise in the morn. And the governor seemed not to care one bit. Leland supposed it was possible this was an elaborate scheme to murder him, Aurelius, and Selea. They all held enough rank and titles that they would be very difficult to put to death openly. It was also entirely possible that Anton sought to start a war. For what purpose, though, Leland could not fathom. Either way, this madness would surely end in blood.
