The path ran along the cornfield and, a half mile farther down, dipped into woods. The river was near enough to smell over the bruised corn and the hot horses.
The Whistlers dismounted, tied off their horses, and went silent as wolves into the woods. Ren wanted to follow, but she knew her own value. Her life wasn’t worth the capture of the cannons. There too was the niggling thought that the small woodlot would be a perfect ambush site by the Whistlers. She signaled to her women to ready weapons, wishing she had told Raven of her indiscretion. Now, on the cusp of battle, would be a foolish time to make her women doubt their allies. On the other hand, letting the captain of her guard ride blindly into an ambush seemed particularly stupid.
She fought her conscience while silence came from the woods and one lone cicada droned loudly.
A Whistler came trotting out of the woods and tugged on her cap bill in salute. “There’s signs that a riverboat tied off and something heavy was loaded. No cannons, but there are a couple of fresh graves.”
“Show me.” Ren dismounted.
A screen of brush in the woods proved to be false, a deliberate attempt to hide the path down to the river. On the high bank some forty feet from the river’s edge, the thieves’ camp showed evidence of being used often. River stone shielded a fire pit from the river. Evergreens hid a corral of sapling stringers.
A well-beaten path led down to a spring-fed streamlet, a wooden bucket beside it waiting for the next visit. A secretive camp, but one long-standing, not erected overnight. The corral and fire pit both had seen winter. Thinking of the cornfield she left behind, Ren guessed at the origin of the camp.
Beyond the corral, five of the Whistler sisters worked at digging up the graves. Ren signaled to Raven and her women to help with the unearthing and continued on to where Eldest Whistler crouched beside the fire pit.
“Whiskey runners?” she asked Eldest, meaning the original creators of the campsite. Was it just irony that the thieves used a smuggling camp while stealing cannons meant to fight river smuggling, or had they known what the cannons were going to be used for, and stolen them as a preventive measure?
Eldest shrugged. “Anything taxed going up and down the river. From the number of horses, tents, and footprints, we figure there were about twenty women in all. There are six graves. Heria saw five riders, so that may be them plus one.” She touched the ground and lifted her fingers up to show that they were now tinged red. “This is the killing ground.”
Odelia could have been the plus one. Ren controlled a shiver.
“The killing started here at the fire.” Eldest wiped clean her fingers. “The worst of the blood has been scraped up, probably buried with the victim. There were guns fired.” She tapped a scar of white on a river stone that served as a fireside seat. She pointed out fresh gouges in trees at chest height. “The dead were dragged up there to be buried. Things were cleaned up. That was yesterday, or the night before that. The survivors loaded a riverboat this morning around dawn.” Eldest held her hand out over the white ash in the white pit. “The coals are still warm.”
Ren swore softly. “They had wagons. I can’t imagine them loading them-too noticeable. Can we track those?”
Eldest shook her head, and waved toward the shimmer of water through the trees. “Pushed them in the river and let the current take them.”
“All dead ends.” Ren stalked about the clearing, cursing. They had missed the thieves by a few hours. It was, perhaps, just as well. With her guard and the seven Whistlers they numbered only twenty-one.
True, they outnumbered the surviving thieves, but the campsite had hidden defenses. A jumble of boulders, a fallen tree, and another set of rocks came together to form a disguised wall to shield defenders. Three approaches were uphill with the river at the attackers’ backs.
Ren skirted the disguised wall to consider the only downhill attack. A blur of motion was her only warning- Eldest Whistler came over the low wall in a flying tackle. Eldest slammed into Ren’s waist, and they tumbled onto the ground, Ren on the bottom, a shoulder smashing into her gut.
Shit’t Ren rolled free, reaching for her pistol, thinking. Stupid! Stupid! Ruin their brother and then let them take you out in the middle of nowhere and separate you from your guard! Her pistol had been knocked free during the tumble, lost in the dead leaves. She jerked free her knife, and scrambled into a fighting crouch in the dead leaves.
Eldest crouched a dozen feet from her, unarmed. Eldest made a stiff motion with her hand, palm downward. “Stay still.” She flashed another hand signal, a quick stiff chop that flicked off to the right.
“Traps.”
Ren froze in place. Traps? She was an idiot! Outside the camp and beyond the defense wall, of course there were traps! She glanced back at where she had been walking. A pole tipped with a dozen sharpened stakes pinned her hat to a tree. Eldest hadn’t attacked her- she had saved Ren’s life.
Putting fingers to her mouth. Eldest gave two shrill whistles. ‘“Ware! Traps!” Hearing her warning echoed through the encampment, Eldest turned back to Ren. “Are you all right, Your Highness?”
Ren nodded, sheathing her knife, feeling stupid. “You startled me.”
Eldest grinned. “Did I, now?”
“Yes, but thank you.”
“Another one there, and behind you.” Eldest pointed out a trip wire to either side of her. “Best just hop the wall.”
Raven was coming down from the graves as they slid over the wall. “You might want to see this,” she said, but her face belied her words. Whatever they found was horrible to see.
“What is it?” Ren did not want to go unprepared to the grave site.
“They’ve killed a man.”
It was not enough warning. Ren gagged at what they showed her. Arms tied behind his back, his trousers down around his ankles to expose scrawny hairy legs, paunchy stomach-no dignity afforded him in death. Blood spotted his privates; his rapists had either been virgins or on their menses. Blood had clotted on his face and nose, had pooled in his eyes, and his ears. Drug vials littered the grave with him, paper labels proclaiming everlast. A crib drug, meant to keep the men passive, willing, and able.
Her women had uncovered the grave, and they stood silent, staring at the body. The younger Whistlers hung back, their fierceness stripped by their shock, unable to even look at the man. Her eyes furious, Eldest knelt beside the corpse and covered his nakedness with her coat.
Ren didn’t want to look at the body, even with it decently covered. She didn’t want to think of a rich Wainwright home now reduced to ash, of the intelligent women who were now burned shells, nor of the handsome husband showed off to visiting royalty. She turned instead to Raven. “It’s Wainwrights’ husband, isn’t it?”
“Yes.” Raven said. “His name was Egan, if I remember right.”
“They overdosed him?” Ren guessed. It was a common problem in cribs, and even in a few families where the number of wives was high.
Raven looked bleak and confused. “They cut out his tongue, I suppose to ensure his silence, but botched it completely. Either he choked to death on his own blood, or he bled to death.”
“Holy Mothers!” Ren trembled. “What kind of animals could do this? Rape a man, then maim him so.
What if he got you with child? What do you tell your daughter? I tore your father’s tongue out after I raped him‘?’”
Raven shrugged. “When your family’s been bred out of the cribs, you don’t talk about how you got pregnant. You go into an unlit room, a man half incoherent with drugs ruts on top of you, breaks your hymen-hopefully plants a fertile seed-and you leave. What’s there to say except it was dark, painful, and bloody?”
Ren glanced at the gathered women. The women of her guard-all fathered from cribs-were passive in the face of this horror. The Whistlers, two generations removed from the cribs, looked panic-stricken.
Did you have to have a loving father to understand the horror?
“Your Highness.” Eldest struggled to keep fear from her face. “There’s nothing here for us. We need to go! We need to get back to our brothers!”
Jerin! Odelia! Ren nodded even as she glanced to Raven.
“The other five are river trash.” Raven indicated the other five shallow graves holding women in dirty ragged clothing. “The largest is wearing a bandage on her arm.”
“Odelia’s attackers.”
“They’ve been shot, searched, and buried. There’s nothing to identify them with.”
