Rebels of Vulvar (Vulvarian Saga Book 2)

by J. K. Spenser

  “Throw away your sword,” I said, aiming the bow. “Or the next one will find your heart.”

  The warrior hesitated only a moment before accepting his situation. He tossed the sword from him. It clattered to the road. Then he collapsed to one knee with a hand gripping the shaft of the arrow. I saw it had missed the bone. The point protruded from the front of his thigh.

  “Who are you?” the warrior said, looking at Emer and me.

  “I will ask the questions,” I said. “You will provide the answers. Where are you bound?”

  “I will not answer your questions,” the warrior said defiantly.

  I walked to him, bent down and grasped the shaft of the arrow through his thigh. I yanked on it, pulling the bronze barbed tip back into his wound, causing him to scream in pain. Releasing the arrow shaft, I stood up.

  “Where are you bound?” I said again.

  “Nisa, I am going to Nisa,” he gasped.

  “You’re a messenger,” I said. “What is your report?”

  The warrior stared at me with renewed defiance. “I will not tell you.”

  I stooped and reached for the arrow shaft.

  “No, please, stop,” the man said.

  “I was to carry a battle report to the Dabar.”

  “What battle?” I said. “Where?”

  “The enemy attacked our forces this morning in the forests west of Thiva.”

  “The siege engine builders?” I said.

  “Yes,” the man said with a grimace.

  “What news is there of the battle?”

  “When my commander told me to ride to Nisa, he feared defeat,” the warrior said sullenly. “The enemy was setting fire to the siege engines as I rode away.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “I will not slay you.”

  Turning, I said to Emer, “Let’s go. Leave him.”

  As I walked away believing Emer was following, I heard a groan and then a loud sigh. I turned to see Emer wiping the blade of her rakir on the warrior’s cape. He had slumped onto the road and had a grievous bloody gash to the throat.

  “I said to leave him.”

  “I could not bear to see him suffer,” Emer snickered.

  “He wasn’t going anywhere with an arrow through his thigh,” I said. “He was a wounded, unarmed warrior. What of your warrior codes?”

  “He was not a warrior,” Emer retorted. “He was a rebellious slave. My codes permitted me to slay him.”

  “I don’t approve of murder,” I said. “You kill too easily.”

  “Spend weeks in a cage where your captors refuse to give you food and don’t permit you to wash,” Emer shouted. “Then, you may judge me, commander. The rebels are vermin.”

  I turned away and walked back toward the camp.

  Emer gathered wood and built a small fire. The night was cold. We had not spoken until I told her I would sleep. I retrieved a blanket from my saddle and lay down on the ground close to the fire.

  “May I share your blanket?” Emer said.

  “You didn’t bring your own?” I said.

  “I had a warrior’s cape until you told me to throw it away,” she muttered. “I didn’t think I would need a blanket.”

  I sighed. “Yes, you may share the blanket,” I said, rolling onto my side with my back to her.

  Emer lay down and scooted close to my back, covering herself with the blanket. I felt her warm breath on the back of my neck.

  “I hate them all,” she said, her voice breaking.

  “Because they are males or because they are slaves?” I snapped.

  After a time, she replied in a whisper. “At the enclosure in Nisa, the guards forced us to copulate with them, until enough days passed that we stank too badly because they would not allow us to wash. They held us down and took turns. They defiled us again and again.” Then she cried.

  “All?” I said.

  “Yes, all,” Emer sobbed. “Even the badly wounded warrior who was unconscious when you found us.”

  Rolling over to face her, I took Emer into my arms. She pressed her face to my chest and wept.

  “Emer, I’m so sorry,” I said. “I’m glad you killed that courier. We will slay as many of those vermin as we are able.”

  Sadly, I had learned why things had felt awkward with Idril.

  14

  The Army Marches

  When I woke up, Emer’s arm draped across me, and she was sleeping with her head on my chest. My right arm had fallen asleep. I moved it to restore the circulation, and she woke up and quickly untangled herself from me, looking sheepish. It was still cold. I put the blanket around Emer’s shoulders, tossed more sticks on the fire, and blew on the embers to get it going again.

  “What’s the plan for today, commander?” Emer said after stifling a yawn.

  “We will remain here and observe the road,” I said. “I suspect Dabar Cooke is awaiting word from his force west of Thiva that the siege engines are ready. I expect he will grow impatient and march his army north within a few days.”

  “Then what?”

  “We will shadow them until they stop and make camp the first night out of Nisa. Then I will attempt to sneak into the camp and take him prisoner.”

  “Why not just kill him?”

  I explained my fear that killing Cooke might create a martyr and result in only making the rebels more determined.

  “What am I to do?” Emer said.

  “You will wait with the baacaases for my return with Cooke,” I said.

  “You can’t capture Cooke alone,” Emer said. “Are you mad?”

  “I’m not putting you at risk, Emer,” I said. “If the rebels catch me, all I have to worry about is them killing me. If they capture you, we both know the other cruelties they would inflict upon you.”

  “I’m a warrior, I will do my part,” Emer said stubbornly.

  “Yes, you will,” I said. “You will wait with the baacaases.”

  I threw Emer some dried meat and bread from the saddlebags. Then I took rations for myself. We sat by the fire and ate breakfast. After the meal, we refilled our water flasks at the brook and hiked back to the paved road. Overnight, gutas had reduced both the body of the rebel warrior and the carcass of his baacaas to bones.

  Gutas are opportunistic canine-like omnivores, predators of small to medium-sized animals, birds, and reptiles. They are also proficient scavengers. The guta looks similar to the hyena of Earth. These hardy animals are relatively large in build, adults weighing about 120 pounds. They have relatively short torsos with lower hindquarters and sloping backs. Most have light brown coats with rust-colored stripes at the shoulders and flanks.

  Emer and I dragged the skeletal remains off the road, rolled them into a ditch on the far side, and covered them with large stones. Then we walked back toward our campsite to a rocky hill some two-hundred meters off the road. Large boulders along the crest of the hill concealed us from the view of anyone traveling on it. With the small telescope, I had excellent observation of the road.

  By midday, there had been no traffic. With no trade taking place between Thiva and Nisa since the revolt, I assumed no one needed to travel the way between. Emer and I ate a midday meal of the rations we had carried with us. As dusk fell, we still had seen nothing and left the hill to walk back to our camp. We moved the baacaases to a new patch of grass, rebuilt the fire, and ate our evening rations.

  “I hope they come soon,” Emer said. “I am already bored of waiting.”

  “Yes, I agree,” I said. “If we see nothing tomorrow, we will ride closer to Nisa to see if we can observe anything.”

  Again we shared my blanket when we lay down by the fire to sleep but slept back to back and didn’t speak. I assumed Emer felt embarrassed about weeping and telling me what had happened while the rebels held her captive. I was pleased she had confided in me because it had steeled my resolve. I no longer felt any sympathy for the insurgents and would kill as many of them as necessary to capture their leader.

  At midda
y, the second day of observing the road was like the first. No traffic had moved past us. But, around the ninth hour, as I judged the time from the position of the Vulvarian sun, we heard the tramp of many sandals approaching on the road from the south.

  “The army comes,” Emer said.

  “Yes,” I said. “We will stay and watch until they pass so we can observe how they have organized the march column.”

  As I watched with the telescope to my eye, in the vanguard, officers at the front led many ranks of warriors past us. Three enclosed caravans pulled by teams of veovarks came next. I assumed the Dabar and his senior officers rode in those. More ranks of warriors followed the caravans. The warriors protected the top leaders on the march in front and back. The supply trains, veovark drawn wagons with canvas covers, followed the second echelon of warriors. Behind the trains marched a small rearguard.

  “Let’s return to the baacaases,” I said to Emer. “We will stay close enough to the road so we can keep track of the caravans at the center of the column from the sound of their wheels on the road.”

  Emer nodded and followed me down the back slope of the hill. Then we jogged back to the stream where we had left the baacaases. Saddling the animals swiftly, we mounted and loped them back toward the road before turning north. In only a few minutes, I heard the caravan wheels rumbling along the stone-covered road. We slowed our mounts to a walk and kept pace with the rebel column for the rest of the day.

  As dusk approached, the wheels of the caravans ground to a halt, and I heard officers shouting orders to make camp. Emer and I turned our baacaases and rode west a safe distance away as the rebel army moved off the road to bivouac for the night. As the darkness deepened, lights from campfires and burning torches appeared all along the length of the camp. It seemed the army had gone into the encampment in the same formation as they had marched, which meant the caravans should be roughly straight east from our position. I told Emer to dismount and climbed down from my baacaas.

  “What now?” she said.

  “We wait until the main body beds down for the night,” I said. “Then, we must encourage the night watch to douse their campfires and extinguish the torches.”

  “How do we do that?”

  I held up my bow. “With this,” I said.

  After securing the baacaases, we ate our evening rations while waiting for the warriors to take to their blankets. Some hours after the army had left the road and made camp, the sound of pots clattering as they had prepared their rations and the buzz of many voices lessened. After a while longer, all was quiet.

  “We will wait a few more hours to let the warriors fall deeply asleep,” I said.

  Sitting with our backs together, Emer and I dozed on and off while we waited. At one point, she shifted and woke me. Looking up at the stars, I estimated it was past the twentieth hour, roughly the middle of the night on Vulvar.

  “Are you awake?” I said.

  “Yes,” Emer said.

  “Good, let’s go,” I said.

  Leading the baacaases, we walked close to the enemy encampment. With the aid of the telescope, I located the caravans.

  The drivers of the caravans and those of two other wagons had parked them in a circle. The warriors had erected large tents to the north and south of the circled conveyances. It was a dark night, but by the light of the campfires and torches, I quickly made out the night watch patrolling their posts.

  Motioning to Emer to move forward, I led her northwest, so we approached the tents the warriors of the vanguard occupied. I saw an officer walking about, checking on the guards to make sure they were awake and alert. Handing the reins of my baacaas to Emer, I reached back and withdrew an arrow from the quiver.

  A warrior on watch leaned his spear against a tree, removed his helmet, and scratched his head with the fingers of his other hand. He fell back against the trunk of the tree and then slumped down into a sitting position with his legs folded beneath him. A few moments later, the officer of the watch approached the warrior. Crying out, the officer angrily seized the man’s shoulders, shaking him, then looked into the man’s eyes. He released the man, stood up, and backed away. He cried out, summoning warriors who gathered around him.

  The arrow from my bow with the three-edged bronze point had passed through the head of the warrior before losing itself somewhere distant. I didn’t think the officer realized what weapon had slain his warrior. He knew only the man had been alive and was now dead and bore two opposing bloody holes on either side of his head.

  Uncertain and fearful, the warriors looked about into the darkness beyond their fires. The camp was quiet again. Taking the reins of my baacaas from Emer, I motioned her forward, and we led the animals further north along the line of tents. Now I heard shouts of confusion from south to north as the warriors on watch tried to pass the word to their comrades about the dead warrior.

  Next to a campfire, I saw an officer listening, trying to make sense of the shouting and confusion. All the other warriors on watch were looking south to see what was the matter. Handing the reins of my mount back to Emer, I notched another arrow. Setting my feet with my heels aligned with the target, my body at a right angle to the target line, and my head turned to the left, I drew the bow. I took a breath, held it, and released the second arrow. The arrow passed completely through the body of the officer and then vanished in the brush beyond him. He fell face down beside the fire. The officer had not cried out, but a warrior standing near him screamed in fear when he saw the man fall.

  Now there was much shouting and confusion. Someone sounded trumpets to raise the alarm, and warriors rubbing sleep from their eyes started stumbling out of the tents. Soon the rebel trumpets sounded up and down the length of the camp.

  Throughout the night, unhurried, Emer and I, like prowling predators, moved up and down the line of the camp, and when it pleased me, I loosed other arrows from the great Vulvarian bow. After emptying the first quiver of arrows, I drew from the other. I struck first the officers I identified by the brushes of baacaas-hair on top of their helmets. As officers became harder to find, I targeted warriors.

  More than an hour passed before the officers realized the campfires and torches back-lighted them and their men, making them easy targets. The officers gave orders, and warriors began dousing the campfires and extinguishing the flaming torches. Soon it was completely dark.

  I supposed the rebels must have found some arrows and then understood the weapon used against them. Since Emer and I had attacked all along the length of the encampment, the officers must have wrongly assumed they faced many archers as they were reluctant to send their warriors out into the darkness with their shields and spears.

  Once again, I handed the reins of my baacaas to Emer, and standing close to her whispered my instructions. “Take the baacaases back to the stream to the east,” I said. “Wait there for me until dawn. If I don’t appear with Cooke, ride for Thiva.”

  “I will not leave you,” Emer argued.

  “You must if I don’t return,” I said. “Either I will succeed, or the rebels will slay me. If it is the latter, I want you to escape. Understand?”

  “Yes, commander,” Emer said with sadness.

  “Good,” I said. “Are you skilled with the bow?”

  “Yes,” Emer said.

  I put the bow and quiver into her hands. “Then take these, I will not need them.”

  “Please be careful,” Emer said. “Come back to me at the stream.”

  “I will,” I said, drawing the katana. I turned away and stalked silently toward the caravans.

  As I approached the camp, there was still much shouting and confusion. I could make out dark masses of warriors bunched together and milling about. A plan came to my mind for how I might add to the chaos.

  At the edge of the camp, I came upon the dark outlines of two warriors. I swiftly approached them, plunged the point of the katana into the first, then withdrew the blade and slashed the other across the throat. Both fell at my fee
t. Reaching down, I loosed the short sword from the sheath of one man. Then I beat the flat side of it against the flat side of the katana, making the ringing sounds of blades being crossed by opposing warriors.

  “The Thivans are among us!” I shouted as I continued striking blade against blade. “The Thivans are among us!”

  The shouts and sounds of disorder nearby grew louder. Then, to my delight, I heard both spear points and swords striking shields, men cursing and shrieking in the darkness. The now terrified rebel warriors mistook friends for foes. I dipped in and out of the milling bodies, driving my blade into one warrior and then another.

  “The Thivans are among us,” I shouted. “Fight!”

  Others took up my call. There were more cries and clashing of steel. The turmoil swept through the camp like wildfire. When it seemed there was enough screaming and cursing, with care, I withdrew from the dark throngs of combatants and skirted the edges of the camp. Slowly, making no sound, I made my way toward the ringed caravans. When I got to them, I examined them one by one, trying to determine in the darkness, which was that of the Dabar. Checking the interiors one by one did not seem a wise tactic, as someone might raise the alarm before I located Cooke.

  Disregarding the misgivings that had suddenly seized me, I approached the steps to the door of the caravan I intended to enter. From out of the darkness, a hand reached out and grabbed my sword wrist. To my amazement, the hand that grasped me felt as hardened and solid as the hide of a baacaas. Before I knew what was happening, my arm was jerked downward and twisted, and I had been thrown onto my back at the feet of a man. He kicked the katana from my hand, and I heard it skid across the ground beneath the caravan. He set his sizeable sandaled foot against my throat, and I felt him press the point of a sword against my chest. He laughed a mighty, roaring laugh, and threw his head back. The man, of gigantic stature, had a massive, lion-like head, with long dark hair and a wild, unkempt beard.

  “I am Russell Cooke, Dabar of Nisa,” the man roared. “Now tell me. Who are you, and why do you skulk about my caravan in the darkness with a drawn sword?”