Captain Matibar’s feelings were different indeed. The Senecan had to admit privately to himself that he entertained something that felt very akin to jealousy. Fervently, he wished that he could have stood shoulder-to-shoulder with free men and resisted the will of tyranny. For years, he had harbored doubts about his government’s version of history, and as tales came out of the west with every trader and privateer, those doubts had grown.
The previous winter, when Aram and his companions had ridden into Seneca from the west, bringing tales coinciding with those of the seamen, Matibar was almost immediately convinced that Seneca must re-join the world and lend its strength to the side of right. He had related his feelings to Andar, the son of the Eldest, and discovered that that which he had long suspected was true – the young scion of the High Seat felt much the same.
When the Eldest died shortly after Aram’s journey to their land and Andar ascended the Seat of Instruction, it had seemed like a sign to the captain. Evidently, Andar looked upon that event in the same way. Immediately upon his ascension, the young ruler had informed his people that they would join with Aram, the son of their ancient ally, Joktan the Great, and enter the struggle against The Scourge.
Though he dreaded separation from his family, Matibar had volunteered on the instant to go into the west.
As he gazed now upon the very ground where the first great battle of that struggle had occurred he felt his heart quicken and his blood rise. Silently, he swore to himself that the conflict would never again proceed with him absent from the fray.
Across the slope to the north of the stream, scattered here and there, were carcasses of the enemy where they had fallen and been left to rot by Manon’s host. Evidently, vultures and other scavengers had done their necessary work, for all that was left were bones, just now beginning to bleach white under the hot sun of summer.
After passing the battlefield, Aram led the company on up the road toward the north until they reached the top of a rise from which they could look down upon the first of Manon’s slave holdings on the southern plains. It was a large operation, with fields of grain spreading out for a good distance to both sides of the thoroughfare. Immediately on either side of the road there was the burned wreckage of what had once been a sizeable town. Surrounding those ruins, there were now only the expansive fields and the clusters of rude huts for the field-tenders and their masters.
As they sat boldly on the rise studying the slave holding, several lashers made their way out from among the fields and into the roadway at the center of the ancient ruins. There they stood in a huddle, watching the mounted riders. Though they gestured roughly to one another and seemed to be quite agitated, none made any movement toward Aram and his company. To Aram, it rather appeared as if they were instead preparing to retreat to the north if the company decided to engage. Evidently, the defeat of the army of their fellows in the spring along with the death of that army’s commander had affected the thinking of the beasts in this particular part of the world.
“I could drop one or two of those beasts from here, I believe, Lord Aram,” Matibar stated abruptly. Aram looked over at him. The captain from the east had already unslung his bow and reached back to place a hand upon his quiver, waiting for Aram to give him leave to execute his desire.
Aram smiled slightly and turned his attention back to the distant lashers. “You’ll get your chance, captain – in fact, I promise that you’ll get many chances to put your skill and that fine bow to use. But for now, we’ll leave them to worry and wonder.”
With that, Aram turned his attention to the broad swaths of tall green wheat. In just a few weeks’ time it would ripen, acres and acres of quality food. Already concerned about the thousands of mouths that were now his to feed, he realized that the time to rescue this group of slaves and take them eastward into freedom would be just after the time of harvest, when the fruits of this year’s labor would go with them. In order to accomplish that feat, he needed the lashers standing in the road to his front to remain unmolested and have time to grow complacent. Also, of course, he would need many more wagons than were presently at his disposal to move the numbers of people he could see in the fields.
Speaking to Thaniel, he turned off the road and led the column southwest toward the hills. For now, as the first order of business, he wanted to deal with the ongoing vile payment of tribute from Elam to the grim lord. Perhaps, in the course of that effort, he might also gain the wagons he needed.
They hugged the hills as they went westward for four days at a rapid pace. Though they counted several slave holdings, spaced fairly evenly along the southern fringe of the plains, they still had not encountered Manon’s western route. Durlrang ranged far out to the north, in the rolling grasslands, each evening bringing Aram a count of the lashers and overseers that attended each village. By night they camped among the wooded hills to the south. These rather gentle uplands were covered mostly with a growth of stubby junipers though willows, rushes, and an occasional hardwood found root along the streams that flowed northward out of the hollows.
During the daylight hours, whenever Aram spied a slave village out on the plains, something that occurred with greater frequency here inside what Manon no doubt considered his proper borders; he made no effort to hide the column. Kipwing was in the sky above them and if there were any congregations of the enemy large enough the challenge them, he would send down a warning. Durlrang was diligent as always. But none of the villages, though each was amply protected by overlords, contained anything to alarm them.
Before coming west, he’d sent Alvern to look down upon the valley where Ka’en insisted on giving birth to their first child. If the eagle found nothing to concern him, he was then to go to the southwest, into the skies over Elam. Aram hoped eventually to swing around to the south after he’d discovered Manon’s western route, rendezvous with the ancient eagle and gain news of that great land before returning into the east.
Midmorning on the fifth day of driving into the west, just as they approached a rocky rise where the hills on the south sent a low extension of themselves jutting into the rolling sameness of the grasslands, Kipwing’s voice came down.
“There is a well-travelled road not more than a mile to your front, my lord. It is in fine condition and looks to be of ancient construction.”
“Does anything move along it?” Asked Aram.
“No trains of wagons are moving along it near to you, my lord. There is a train far to the south going southward through Aniza away from you,” the eagle responded. “Closer at hand, however, something unusual approaches from the north.”
Aram spoke to Thaniel and signaled the others, bringing the column to a halt. After peering into the north, he looked skyward. “Describe what it is that approaches,” he said to Kipwing.
“It is a large company of lashers, my lord, and they bear something along with them.”
“Bear something? Along with them?” Aram frowned as he gazed forward as though by doing so he could see through the rise to his front. “What is it that they bear with them – can you tell?”
“It is a conveyance,” the eagle answered.
“A cart?”
“No, Lord Aram. The conveyance has poles and is carried by them. It has no wheels.”
“What is inside – or who is inside?” Aram queried, his interest rising. “Can you see?”
“I cannot, my lord.”
“There is a small hillock to our front,” Aram told the eagle.
“I see it, my lord.”
“And the road passes to the south just beyond that higher ground?”
“It does.” Kipwing assured him.
“How far is the road from the hill?”
“It swings back toward the east as it approaches the hills, my lord,” Kipwing replied. “At that point, to your south, it will pass very near the higher ground.”
“Are the lashers coming at speed?”
“They are jogging, my lord. Their progress is steady and conside
rable.”
“How large is the company of lashers?”
“There are about fifty, perhaps a few more,” Kipwing said.
“Thank you, my friend.” Aram turned and glanced over the company. “Did everyone hear?”
There were nods all around.
“Alright,” Aram said and he looked toward the south and the hills. Out here on the grasslands, there were just bits of scattered brush that gradually diminished in number until there was only grass running away to the northern horizon. But southward where the rise to their front was swallowed up by the hills from which it extended, there were clumps of juniper that grew along the crest as it jutted northward.
He pointed. “We’ll go there, into those stands of juniper and ease up the slope until we can see this road of which Kipwing speaks. We’ll wait there for these lashers and see what they are about – and what it is that they bear with them – then decide what we will do about them.”
The horses carried them quickly southward to the edge of the hills and then Aram turned to the west and guided the company carefully up the shallow slope until they could see the road running north to south less than a hundred yards to their front. Just as Kipwing had described, it was a very good, sound road, and had the appearance of having been designed by the engineers of old. Aram leaned around the low, spreading branches of a juniper and looked into the north. As yet, he could see no lashers jogging toward them along the ancient pavement.
He glanced along the line of men. “Stay far enough downslope that the horses cannot be seen,” he instructed. “And keep tree branches between you and the road. I don’t want our presence discovered until we see them and decide what may be done.”
Perhaps a half-mile to the north, the road came southward over a stream via a low, arched bridge, after which it began a long slow curve back toward their position for several hundred yards. Coming close to the rise where they were hidden, it straightened out again about a hundred yards or so to their front and ran southward up through a hollow and into the hills along the banks of a small stream. Away to the north, beyond the bridge over which the road came south, the grasslands undulated away unbroken and gentle, and the road rose and fell with them. Aram fixed his gaze on the point where the road appeared over a rise about a quarter-mile beyond the bridge.
After several minutes a large company of lashers appeared, jogged up and over the rise, and then disappeared into the swale between. Kipwing was right; there were at least fifty of the massive beasts. They were coming southward along the road side-by-side, in one long column. Twenty of the beasts, more or less, jogged along the road in front of a strange poled conveyance that was borne by another eight lashers at the center of the company, four on each side. This was followed by twenty or so more that brought up the rear.
“What is that?” Aram asked as the column of lashers appeared over another rise just north of the bridge that spanned the distant stream. “Can anyone make it out?”
Everyone gazed northward as the lashers and their strange cargo made for the bridge that arched over the stream.
The conveyance consisted of a square box, perhaps six feet long and nearly as high, that rested atop two long poles. Each of the poles was gripped by four lashers, two in front and two behind on either side of the box as they jogged along the road. As the column came closer, Aram and his companions could make out that there was a kind of door or perhaps an elongated window in the near side of the box.
“Is there someone inside that thing?” Asked Wamlak.
“There must be,” Jonwood declared. “Why would they carry an empty box? – Unless, of course, it contains something else of value. But I bet it’s a person.”
Mallet’s eyes grew wide as he looked over at Aram. “Could it be Manon?”
For just a moment, Aram thrilled to the possibility that he might catch his enemy so far away from his fortress, almost unprotected, accompanied by just fifty lashers. Such an event would present a chance for him to end the madness without what would likely be many more years of fierce struggle.
Then, submitting to more reasoned thoughts, he shook his head.
“No,” he told Mallet. “The grim lord would not travel so far away from his tower in the company of so few. It’s someone else – but undoubtedly someone important to his purposes and sent here by him.”
As the lashers jogged across the bridge and began to come southward along the curve of the road, Aram made a quick examination of the length of the road that stretched between the distant columns and the point where it entered the hills to their front. After but a moment, he reached a decision.
“I would like to eliminate those beasts and see who it is that they bear into the south,” he told the others. He looked to his left and right, meeting the eyes of his commanders in quick succession. “Quickly, give me your judgment.”
Boman gave a shrug. “They are the enemy,” he said simply.
“I agree,” Edwar stated, “but there are fifty of them.” After considering for a moment longer, he shrugged as well. “Then again, there are almost forty of us, nearly as many as they.” Turning, he grinned over at Aram. “And we have you with us.”
Aram nodded and looked at Matibar, who raised his eyebrows in answer, surprised that his consent was sought. “I told you, my lord,” the Senecan replied, “I came to the west that I might fight against the Scourge and his minions.” He looked out at the approaching group of lashers. “Here I am – and there they are.”
Aram nodded shortly and returned his attention to the road and the enemy coming toward them along it. “I’d like to meet them on the open ground where the horses can maneuver,” he said, “but I don’t want to give them too much warning, either. If they get into the hills, we lose the advantage that the horses grant us. And if we give them time to get organized, we run the risk of casualties.” He pointed at a flat area two hundred yards out from where the road entered the hills, but before he could continue, Matibar interrupted him.
“Lord Aram, if I may?”
Aram looked over at him.
The Senecan had unlimbered his bow and was holding three arrows in his hand. He nodded out toward the approaching lashers. “If I can bring down one of those beasts carrying the box, and wound one or two more, wouldn’t that halt them and discomfit them somewhat, giving us a chance to engage them on your terms?”
Aram gazed at him for a moment and then glanced out toward the ground where he wanted to meet his enemy. His eyes narrowed as he looked back at Matibar. “From this distance?” He asked.
Matibar nodded confidently, without hesitation. “The first shaft will be a direct hit, I promise you; the next two will strike them as well but may not do as much damage as the first.”
Aram looked into the captain’s eyes and saw certainty there. “And you can put a few more into them as we make our charge?” He asked.
“Yes.”
Aram looked beyond him. “Wamlak?”
The Derosan captain studied the ground and shook his head. “I’d have to be closer.”
“I understand,” Aram nodded. “Still, try to put one or two in them as we get close.”
Wamlak grinned. “I will certainly do that, my lord.”
Aram looked back at the approaching column of lashers. “Alright. We’ll follow the Captain’s arrows in – in two ranks. Matibar, Wamlak, Boman, the Duridians, and I will be in the first rank. Edwar – you and the rest will follow close behind with lances at the ready. The Duridians will use their crossbows as we get close and then peel away. I will ride ahead and use the sword to inflict as much damage as possible before we make contact. Questions?”
There were none.
“Stay out of sight and form into ranks,” Aram commanded quietly. “Make ready.”
Quickly, the men from Lamont and Derosa went back down the slope and formed up in a line behind Aram and the Duridians.
To their front, the lashers had negotiated the curve in the road and were entering the straight length of pavem
ent.
Aram looked over at Matibar. “Whenever you’re ready, captain.”
The Senecan drew on his magnificent bow until the string hummed in the stillness of the day. Sighting along the shaft which was tipped by a strange blue point, he fixed his eye on the distant lashers; then lifted the tip of the missile until he was satisfied, and slowly moved the weapon along the tangent of their progress.
There was a sharp Twang! as he released, and then in rapid succession he nocked the second and third missiles and released them in the direction of the enemy after the first. Aram watched in fascination as the arrows inscribed a low parabolic arc as they flew toward the enemy.
Yanking his attention away from the streaking missiles, he pulled the hood over his head, drew the sword and spoke to Thaniel, at the same time uttering the command. “Go!”
They surged over the top of the rise and thundered down the slope through the scattered junipers toward the flatter ground. As they broke out into the open and drove toward the road, Aram looked ahead. The column of lashers had come to a halt. One lay twitching upon the pavement of the road, with just the fletched end of one of Matibar’s arrows protruding from his skull. Another was on his knees scrabbling at a rod buried in his side, and yet another reeled about uncertainly, clutching at his left shoulder. Matibar had been as good – and as capable – as his word.
Aram held the sword aloft and washed it in sunlight.
“Ready weapons!” He yelled.
The lashers rapidly re-organized themselves, forming a convex line a few yards in front of the box, which now sat motionless in the center of the road. The beasts drew weapons and prepared to receive the men and horses.
Aram waited until his men came within thirty yards of the enemy and then gave the command, “Loose arrows!”
Kelven's Riddle Book Four Page 31
