“The farms over there don’t get raided much. The families are probably heathens, or they’re too close to Bordertown. The farms to the north and further east, however, get raided on a regular basis.”
“Heathens! If you know that, why don’t you arrest them!”
Tarja scanned the ford as he spoke. “I don’t
“To place the law of a god above the law of the Sisterhood is treason,” Gawn reminded him officiously.
Tarja didn’t bother to reply. There was a line of trees southeast of them which could easily conceal a raiding party. There was no telltale glint of metal to alert him to their presence, no betraying nicker from a horse, or even the soft lowing of stolen cattle on the breeze. But they were out there. Tarja trusted his instincts over his eyes. He knew the Hythrun Warlord was waiting, as he was, for his chance to cross the stream.
Tarja had been on the border long enough to develop a grudging respect for Lord Wolfblade and kept an unofficial score in his head. By his calculation he was currently one up on the Warlord. The day before Gawn’s arrival, he had foiled a raid on a farm not far from the ford a few days before the Feast of Kalianah, the Goddess of Love. Tarja thought wryly that if the Hythrun did not worship so many gods, his life would have been very boring indeed.
Gawn fidgeted impatiently, uncomfortable with the waiting, and no doubt concerned that his uniform was getting dirty. Finally he stood up, disdainfully brushing dirt and grass seeds from his red coat.
“This is pointless!” he declared loudly.
The black-fletched Hythrun arrow took Gawn in the left shoulder. Tarja let out a yell as Gawn screamed. Gawn clutched at the protruding arrow, blood seeping through his fingers. Tarja glanced at the young captain and quickly judged that the wound was not fatal, so he left him where he fell. Tarja’s troop of forty Defenders broke from the trees behind him with a savage war cry. From the tree line he had been watching so closely, the Hythrun raiders broke cover, driving a dozen or more red spotted cattle.
Tarja quickly judged the distance to the border and realized it was going to be a close call. He turned back to his men, waiting impatiently as his sergeant, Basel, led his mount toward him at a gallop, hardly slowing as he approached. Tarja began to run forward as they neared him. The sergeant dropped the short lead rope as he grabbed at the pommel of the saddle. He let the horse’s momentum carry him forward and swung up into the saddle on the run. He could barely keep his seat as his feet searched for the flying stirrups and he untied the reins from the pommel.
The Warlord’s raiding party was cutting across the open plain toward the stream, riding at a gallop, stampeding the stolen cattle before them. Tarja and his men, leaning forward in their saddles, rode diagonally at a dead run to cut them off. The Hythrun knew that the Defenders were forbidden to cross the border. The stream represented safety and the fifty or more Raiders had only one aim in mind – to reach it before the Defenders could intercept them.
Tarja caught the tail end just as the first of the Hythrun were splashing over the ford to safety. The cattle ran blindly, too spooked to stop for anything as insignificant as a shallow stream. As soon as they were safely across, the Raiders in the lead ignored their booty, and wheeled their mounts around in a tight circle. They plunged back over the ford to hold off the Defenders while their comrades made the crossing.
The opposing forces were suddenly too intermingled for them to risk their short bows. Steel rang against steel as Tarja plunged through the melee, looking for Damin Wolfblade. He spied the fair head of his adversary at almost the same time as the Warlord caught sight of him. The Hythrun turned his mount sharply and galloped to meet the Medalonian captain.
Tarja ignored the battle around him as he raced to engage the Warlord, although a part of him realized that more and more of the Hythrun had reached the safety of the ford. Damin came at him with a bloodcurdling cry, wielding his longsword with consummate skill. He dropped his reins, guiding his magnificent golden stallion with his knees, as Tarja blocked the blow, jarring his arm to his shoulder. He parried another bone-numbing strike and quickly countered with a killing stroke that Damin barely deflected at the last moment. The Warlord was laughing aloud and Tarja knew his own face was set in a feral grin as he traded blows with him. They were so evenly matched, had done this so many times before, it was as much a part of the game as the cattle raids.
“You lose this time, Red Coat!” Damin shouted, as he suddenly steered his mount from under Tarja’s blow, which would have taken his arm off at the shoulder had it connected. Tarja glanced around and realized that almost all the Hythrun were over the ford, although several were nursing bloody wounds. His own men milled about in frustration, just as weary and bloodied, as they watched the enemy escape. Wolfblade wheeled his horse around, before splashing over the stream to safety, and saluted Tarja impudently with his sword from the other side.
“That makes us even, Red Coat!” Apparently Tarja was not the only one keeping score.
The Hythrun raiders wheeled around and galloped away from the border to gather their stolen cattle, whooping victoriously, taunting the Defenders.
Tarja let out a yell of frustration as he watched them ride away. If only that parade-ground fool had kept his head down. He cursed Gawn under his breath as the Hythrun disappeared into the trees on their side of the border.
“Why in the name of the Founders can’t we follow them?” Basel demanded as he rode up to Tarja. His sleeve was torn and soaked with blood from a long, shallow cut, but the sergeant appeared too angry to notice he had been wounded.
“You know the answer to that, Basel,” Tarja reminded him, his chest heaving. “We’re under strict orders not to cross the border.”
“A stupid order given by stupid women who sit in the Citadel with no idea what happens outside their bloody sewing circle!”
In anyone else’s hearing, such a comment would have earned him a whipping, but Tarja knew how he felt. He shared the man’s frustration. All the border troops did.
“Be careful Gawn doesn’t hear you voice such sentiments, my friend,” he warned.
Basel scratched at his graying beard and glanced back toward the red-coated figure stumbling through the waist-high grass toward them. Gawn clutched his arrow-pierced shoulder calling out for assistance.
“One could almost wish the Hythrun were better marksmen,” the sergeant remarked wistfully.
“I suspect they’ll get many more opportunities to use him for target practice. In the meantime, you’d better get Halorin to take that arrow out of his shoulder. The last thing I need is Gawn whining about a festering wound. Then we’d best see how much damage Wolfblade did to the farmsteaders.”
The trail left by the Hythrun was not hard to follow. Tarja led his men along the raider’s path for several hours before they reached the small farm that had been the target of the raid. The Warlord never raided the same farm twice in succession – he preferred to leave his victims time to recover before he struck again.
Tarja urged his horse to a canter as the smell of burning thatch reached him. Damin Wolfblade was not a particularly vicious man. He was certainly an improvement on his predecessor, who had been known to crucify his victims. If the farmsteaders offered no resistance, he rarely did more than destroy a few fences and take his pick of the cattle.
As they rode into the small yard surrounding the farmhouse, Tarja was shocked by the devastation. The house was gutted. In the smoldering ruin only the stone fireplace still stood. Where the barn had been was nothing but a forlorn, blackened framework that threatened to topple at any moment. Tarja dismounted slowly, shaking his head.
“We didn’t have no choice, Cap’n.”
Tarja turned at the sound. Leara Steader, the owner of the farm, walked toward him from the gutted house. Her homespun dress was torn and filthy, her face soot-streaked, her eyes dull with grief. Her arms hugged her thin, shivering body, despite the heat of the late afternoon sun.
“You know better than to fight them, Leara,” he said, handing his reins to Basel. “What happened? Where is Haren?”
She stared at him blankly before answering. “Haren’s dead.”
Tarja took Leara’s arm and led her to the well. “What happened?” he asked again, as he carefully sat her down. The normally tough farmsteader looked fragile enough to break.
