I lowered the spyglass again and looked back at Flint, who had come to and was licking a paw.
“Venari doesn’t trust this Egnor much, does she? Not a very cohesive chain of command, is it?”
Flint paused, leered at me with her tongue lolling over teeth, then lifted a leg and started washing her butt.
I grinned and turned back to the camp. So, if Venari didn’t trust one of her most senior subordinates, then she had a critical weakness in her force, one that might more than offset her huge advantage in numbers. Her command and control structure was as flimsy as a rotten old shack in the bush. Combine that with her reliance on slaves, and this whole force, as imposing as it seemed rolling across the landscape, might just come apart at the seams.
Now, I wasn’t entirely sure how to capitalize on this . . . yet. I needed to see these Osterway thugs in action. So far, we’d managed to ambush individuals, but that didn’t tell me much. If I was going to find the specific cracks to start prying at, we needed a real fight.
Back through the spyglass, I saw the Osterway starting to break camp. At the rate they were moving, they’d be underway shortly before dusk. So, they weren’t waiting the night, which meant they’d be moving in the dark. And it was an almost full moon tonight.
Perfect.
I looked back at Flint. “Get your butt washed and whatever else you wanna do done, girl, because now it’s for sure—tonight is gonna be a busy one.”
Clouds came scudding in just before sundown, along with another chilly breeze off distant Le’kemeshaw. Glory season was definitely almost done. More to point, the clouds, not quite a complete overcast, diffused the moonlight, rendering the nighttime landscape in black and silver-grey, and every shade in-between.
The Osterway force rattled and trudged on westward, away from their campsite. I’d ended up counting about eighty that I thought were actual soldiers—the handful of Blackwings and Huntsmen, and just over seventy that were line regulars. The rest, about four hundred in all, were clearly slaves, with about fifty overseers keeping them corralled together and driving them on. Another couple dozen drovers ran their baggage train, and then there was Egnor’s command group of another half dozen or so, personal guards and runners. A big force—much bigger, at first glance, than what Watermanse could muster. But take away the slaves, and the rest would suddenly not be too terrible a threat—certainly not against the defenses the town had prepared. Of course, that ignored the main body up north, which was clearly much larger than this one. But one thing at a time.
Flint and I shadowed the column, sometimes from behind, sometimes flanking it. I took my time, figuring out how they’d arranged themselves, what precautions they’d taken for march security, and where the gaps were. By midnight, I had about as complete a picture as I was going to get and knew what I wanted to do.
I glanced at Flint, who was crouched beside me in some high grass on a bank overlooking the column. Most of it had already passed by. When I was reasonably sure the last of the slave column had marched west of us, I rose and started downslope, moving fast and low, Flint close beside and behind me. A few shallow ravines scored the incline, eroded by past rains, so we had a little cover almost the entire way. As the end of the column plodded past, we rose again and closed in. If we made any sound at all, it was washed away by the racket of wagon wheels and tromping feet.
I picked my target, a man cradling a rifle. He and a few of his comrades at the rear occasionally turned to look behind. But he didn’t do it often enough, and when he did, it was predictable, like he counted so many steps, looked back, then did it again, over and over.
He was still looking straight ahead when I caught up to him and jammed my knife into his neck. I twisted his head so the blood-spray didn’t douse me, and he died in seconds, the big artery in his neck severed. Beside me, Flint planted her paws on another man’s shoulders, pulling him backward and biting down on his face, ripping away his lower jaw and most of his neck before he could call out. Then she veered away, dragging the man into the grass on one side of the path; I pulled my kill off to the other.
We both immediately closed back on the column and did it again. This time, Flint’s target happened to turn and see me kill the man I’d grabbed; he opened his mouth to shout so I punched out, catching him in the throat. His shout came out as a strangled, hissing gasp, then Flint took him down, ripping his neck apart.
Four down, and still no alarm. I was genuinely surprised. Somebody should have noticed soldiers were going missing from the end of this column by now, but apparently no one had. I was sure that would change any second.
Until it did, Flint and I would keep up our grisly work. We were wraiths, appearing out of the darkness, then killing and fading back with the bodies. We managed two more before someone finally looked back and said something. But still the alarm didn’t go up. Instead, I heard questioning tones, more discussion. Clearly, the soldiers ahead were getting the idea now that something was up, but no one wanted to be the first to raise the alarm. So, no initiative. Word had to be passed up, a decision made somewhere higher up the chain of command, then instructions passed back down. Such centralized command was inefficient and slow, another chink in Osterway’s armor.
I gestured to Flint, indicating she should stay hidden this time. A couple of soldiers broke off, turned, and started walking back toward us. They were going to come looking for the missing men. There were more delays, while the column just kept trundling along, blissfully unaware it was under attack. Maybe they had problems with deserters. Didn’t matter, I was good with it.
The two men walked past me. I’d let Flint take care of them. Instead, I rose and, silent as the night itself, crept up into the rear of the column. I was still wearing the Huntsman’s outfit, so when I put myself among the contingent of a dozen or so troops who remained here, at the rear of the march, I got looks, but no one said anything. Of course, if you’re just a regular Osterway soldier, you don’t challenge a Huntsman. Just like the two buffoons doing sentry last night, you just hope they ignore you and go away.
I was now perfectly positioned to strike down four men. The rest could make my life hard if they reacted fast enough, but I doubted they would.
A shout came from well behind the column. The two who’d walked back must have found one of the bodies we’d pulled aside. The shout started as alarm but suddenly became a scream and was just as suddenly cut off. They hadn’t just found a body, then, they’d also found Flint.
I turned and stabbed one man to my right in the eye. At the same time, I kicked out to my left, both to maintain my balance and to break another man’s knee with a thick snap. I yanked my knife back, using the momentum of my kick to spin me so I could rake the point across another man’s face, then turn and chop the fourth man across the throat. Broken-knee and face-gash both reeled, while neck-chop gasped. I reversed direction, coming back at face-gash, tossing my knife in the air, then grabbing his head as he toppled back and twisting it. Breaking his neck was a little harder than it had been when I’d taken down the Huntsman—the man whose outfit I now wore, in fact—because I didn’t have the full momentum of my own weight helping me. It did still break, though, snapping just as I kicked at broken-knee again, once more slamming my foot into his shattered joint, buckling his leg sideways with a grating sound, like gravel scraping stone. I caught my knife again and finished by wheeling back on neck-chop and planting the blade hilt-deep in his throat.
All of it happened in the time it took the rest of them to turn, look at me, and think about reacting. Which was far too late for them.
I yanked my knife free and dodged away from the column, elbowing a soldier in the throat as I passed him. Shouts came from behind, punctuated by thick gurgles and groans of pain. A single shot rang out, the bullet snapping past well off to my left. I pushed into some scrubby undergrowth beneath a stand of elms, making as much noise as I could, then I kept running a few paces, before I went quiet and dodged right, sliding through the foliage p
arallel to the column. A few more rounds cracked through the bush behind me, along the path I seemed to be following. Circling back to the edge of the bush line, I crouched and waited.
One soldier shouted orders, organizing the remaining troops here at the rear of the column into a defensive line, facing the direction I’d gone. An officer. I made sure I kept him located. His orders meant that all the Osterway had effectively turned to face this way. The only ones paying attention in any other direction were two kneeling among the fallen, who either writhed and moaned, or just lay still.
I waited.
After a few heartbeats, a lean, dark shape shot out of the bushes on the other side of the column. One of the kneeling men had enough of a chance to look up and start a cry of alarm, then Flint’s jaws tore out his throat. She ripped through the soldiers like a tornado I’d seen once out west tearing through a stand of mature trees, debris flung from a swath of destruction. As soon as she’d gotten them fully engaged and pulled their horrified attention back in that direction, I lunged out of my hiding place and ran. Again, I felt heartbeats, then I was behind the officer, grabbing his neck, pulling him back, one hand squeezing his throat, the other bringing my knife down into his eye. He was dead before he hit the ground.
Now I got noisy, slamming into the other soldiers nearby, punching, chopping, kicking, and slashing. I needed their attention on me so Flint could break free. When I saw her race off and vanish back into the night pooled around the carnage, I did the same, hacking my knife across a man’s face, then turning and running. More shots snapped like whip-cracks, but I was too fast and elusive a target in the darkness. Still, I didn’t dawdle or get cocky. A lucky shot can kill you just as dead as one deliberately aimed.
Back in cover, I took a breather. A moment later, Flint appeared, nosing her way through the bush and crouching beside me. I gave her a quick once-over; other than a shallow scratch on her flank, the only sign she’d even exerted herself was her panting. I ruffled her fur then looked back at the Osterway column.
There was confusion. Chaos. Shouts went up and down the column, a blur of alarms, questions, and commands. I considered moving in again but decided to hold back; I wanted to give the fear and uncertainty a moment to bubble.
Torches sparked up, flinging wobbly streaks of ruddy light and shadow in every direction. A new detachment of soldiers appeared, jogging from further up the column, weapons at the ready. I scanned the faces for Egnor but didn’t see him. He was either smart and cool, staying out of the immediate fight to try and maintain command and control over the whole force, or a coward. I thought about the eager anticipation in his voice when he’d talked about beating slaves into submission, and no doubt perverted sex, and immediately decided it was the latter.
I wanted him to show his face so I could cut it off his skull.
Flint nuzzled me. I glanced at her and whispered, “I know, anger makes you stupid.” I took a long, slow breath then let it out and focused my attention back on the column.
A defensive square of troops now secured the column’s rear, torches lighting the area around them. Attacking it would be risky. Fortunately, though, we didn’t have to.
I looked back to Flint. “Let’s go, girl.”
We slipped away, paralleling the column again, ghosting our way among scrub and grass and trees to the front. I missed seeing most of the column’s middle section, which was where Egnor probably was, but it was also mostly slaves. Even if I had decided to take him down, doing it among the slaves wasn’t how I’d do it. Too risky—for the slaves. The head of the column, though, was all soldiers. They’d lit a few torches and stood ready in an all-round defense, but it wasn’t anywhere near as tight and disciplined as their comrades at the rear. Of course, these ones hadn’t been attacked. There were no bodies here to make the threat real and immediate for them. That was about to change.
The foliage crowded much closer to the column here, making it easy to attack from cover, kill a man or two, then fade back, move, and strike again from another direction. Flint and I alternated attacking a few times, disrupting them as they tried to form a square, like they had at the rear, never quite giving them a chance to get control of the situation. Once, we attacked together, ravaging our way from one side of the column, tearing through the troops and vanishing into the other. As we took another breather, I saw Flint had taken a couple more gashes. I had a nasty cut on one arm and would have a bruise on the other where I took a hit from a rifle-stock. None of our injuries were serious, but I decided to give Flint a break and do the next attack solo.
This time, I emerged from the bush close to the rear of the column again, shouting and pointing behind me. What the flickering torchlight revealed to the Osterway soldiers was a Huntsman running toward them, warning of an enemy in hot pursuit. The soldiers in front of me tensed, aiming rifles and angling blades into the night, while I ran up to them, gasping as though catching my breath.
I killed three before they’d even started to figure out what was going on.
Flint and I finally had to call it quits. We’d both started faltering in our attacks and were making mistakes; persisting was going to get one or both of us seriously hurt or killed. We’d both taken a few more cuts, and Flint limped slightly on a gouged leg. Again, none of our hurts were especially bad, but like our accumulated fatigue, they were starting to add up.
We found a place well away from the column, on a piece of high ground, so I could watch them. They bustled and fumbled their way through the night, desperately ready for more attacks. A couple of times, parts of the column erupted with fusillades of shots, the soldiers blazing away into the darkness at something they thought they’d seen. I offered them a grim nod through the spyglass.
“Waste that ammo, boys.”
The sun rose on carnage. They’d dealt with some of their dead, but most still lay where they’d fallen, the dirt around them bloody mud. I finally saw Egnor, accompanied by a pair of Huntsman and the three Blackwings, stalking along the column, pointing, swinging clenched fists, and shouting, his flat face as crimson as the sunrise. Again, I wished I’d managed to kill him, or at least take out a Blackwing or two. There could never be enough of their blood soaking the ground to suit my needs.
I lowered the spyglass and glanced at Flint, who was snoozing in the grass a few paces away. I wanted to join her, but I needed to know if what I’d ultimately hoped would happen did. I figured Flint and I had killed or badly wounded at least three dozen soldiers—maybe a few more. It was almost half of Egnor’s regulars. The sheer loss, and the effect on morale, should be enough to make Egnor give some serious thought to a change of plans.
Sure enough, around mid-morning, the column finally got moving again—heading not west, but north. Due north.
He was moving to rejoin Venari’s main body. Now, Watermanse would only have to contend with one attacking force, coming from one direction.
I smiled as I settled down beside Flint and closed my eyes. Uniting with Venari and reorganizing the whole force would cost them at least another day—another day for Watermanse to prepare.
I wondered how Venari would take it and couldn’t imagine her being pleased.
I was still smiling as I drifted off to sleep.
14
Flint and I slept until midday. We hadn’t worried about a watch; when it was just the two of us, we didn’t really need to. Anything that could realistically take us by surprise would not only be rare in the extreme, it would probably be too much for us to handle, anyway.
The column was long gone, of course, but the trail it left was trivially easy to follow. We caught up to it just past late afternoon, as it moved through open, rolling meadows—too open for a daylight attack that would be fraught with real risk. So Flint and I just hovered around the column’s flanks and rear, keeping it in sight, but otherwise keeping our distance. The Huntsmen accompanying it got ambitious and deployed in roving patrols around its line of march, so we had to avoid them—but that just kept the
day interesting.
By sundown, Egnor’s column had taken a pause and then started up the last, long rise, before the ground dropped down again to Le’kemeshaw. We weren’t far, I realized, from where Flint and I had encountered and killed the ghost. The spyglass showed me columns of smoke just off to the northwest, which must’ve been Venari’s force. Further along the lakeshore, I saw another smudge on the horizon. There was only one other thing around that could produce that much smoke—Watermanse.
I swung the spyglass back onto the column. In this more open terrain, I could see almost all of it, and get a much better picture of how it was organized. Right away, I could tell this stop wasn’t just a pause. Egnor had the column going into an all-round defense, which meant he obviously planned to spend the night here, rather than keep marching through a few hours of darkness to join Venari.
Well, that changed things.
I spent the next while studying the Osterway force in detail. In particular, I scrutinized a part of the force I’d largely ignored until now—the slaves. Again, they were effectively penned into a separate part of the defensive perimeter. Many of the slaves seemed to be carted along in wagons, which were kept locked—essentially mobile cells. That left fewer for the overseers to actually guard. It made sense in an efficiently revulsive way.
Legacy Page 13
