easily secure the passage. It was the duke’s lack of enthusiasm, or maybe his downright lack of respect for King Oakarm’s wishes, that kept the passage from being turned into a prosperous avenue of commerce.
At the moment, the passage was only prosperous for the duke and his cronies. The remote location of the ore-rich valley where the stronghold stood made traversing it next to impossible, and made it more than a little inconvenient for the kingdom to impose its will. Duke Martin exploited this fact, and the orders he was given sometimes left Captain Moyle a little unsettled.
Slowing a typical caravan so that bandits could attack was one thing. The stolen goods always found their way back to Highlake and the bandits who were sometimes captured ended up slaving on the wall. Captain Moyle’s pocket was lined with quality coins. Very few lives were lost and the thieves usually only made away with a small portion of cargo before being beaten back. This fiasco was an entirely different matter. He was about to be party to the outright murder of four slaves, not to mention anyone who got in the way of the slaughter.
Amden would fight fiercely to protect his property, and the lard-assed guards would try to fight as well. Moyle’s head was about to be on the line for the duke. Now the anticipation of the attack had him wishing he had declined to participate. When this was done, he would either become one of Duke Martin’s most trusted men, or a total liability.
Gallarael couldn’t believe her mother had sent her on this horrid journey to buy the pretty slave man back from the marketers in Andwyn. The guards, the slave driver, and even the two skinny slaves had been leering at her the whole way out of the mountains.
“Where has your prize gotten off too?” Amden asked Gallarael quietly. “I have not seen him since he returned from digging the shit p… Since he returned from digging the latrine, my lady.”
“Shhhhh,” she hissed. “No ‘my ladies’ out here, fool.” She looked around the camp. The half-moon didn’t go far toward illuminating the space, and the dying fire served only to throw shadows about like skittering spirits. “I don’t see him, either.” She stood. “We wouldn’t even have to be out here in the wild if you had done what my mother asked you to.”
“The orders of a duke outweigh the secret requests of a duchess.” He stood beside her and looked around. “I’m already disobeying your father’s orders by conspiring with you and your mother. It could cost me my freedom.”
“This is my mother’s scheme, slaver.” She spoke from under her hood. “Make no mistake about it.” She had to struggle to keep her voice down. From somewhere at the high side of the camp a long, loud snore sputtered away and then resumed its rhythm.
“If it’s your mother’s dealing, why did you stop me from whipping the cur bastard earlier?”
She said the first thing that came to mind, but she knew that she’d stopped the whip because she didn’t want to see such a beautiful man scarred. “Because it’s cruel.”
“Cruel?” Amden laughed. “Cruel is the way your mother disgraced your father over him. She should have nev-” His words were cut off as an arrow struck him in the head.
It looked to Gallarael as if the shaft had pierced the man’s skull, but Amden cursed and ducked away, grabbing at it. Gallarael screamed, bringing her two personal guards out of their slumber and to the ready. In a pair of heartbeats she was pinned beneath one of them while the other took up a defensive position over them and called out into the night.
“Cease your attack!” he yelled. “Do you dare bring harm upon Princess Gallarael, the daughter of the Duke of Highlake? The king’s own-” The man stumbled back and tumbled over Gallarael and whoever was holding her down. An arrow was sticking out of his chest. Frothy bubbles of blood hissed and sputtered as he inhaled.
Captain Moyle heard the man’s proclamation and recognized the voice as that of Sterven Trent, the head of the duchess’s personal guard attachment. He knew he was in a serious mess now. Sterven’s presence only proved that Princess Gallarael was among them. The girl had to be protected at all costs. It wouldn’t matter to Duke Martin if every member of the caravan was killed as long as Gallarael was spared. He realized, as an arrow sped past his ear, humming like an angry hornet, that the attack on them was coming from everywhere, not just near where the slaves were encamped. Moyle suddenly feared that the duke hadn’t intended for any of them to survive, not even him. Still, the urge to protect the princess overrode his instinctual desire to flee and survive. He started toward the campfire where he had last seen the robed woman he now knew was the princess. The grunts and yells of men being murdered in their half-sleep filled the night. Ahead of him, Amden Gore was on his knees with an arrow protruding out of his temple. The man’s face and shoulder were covered in blood. One of the travelers lay twitching in a sprawl nearby as his life’s blood pulsed out.
Another arrow went whizzing past and Moyle crouched low so that he could huddle in the shadows.
“Gallarael,” he hissed. “It’s Captain Moyle. Tell me where you are and I will-” His voice was drowned out by the high-pitched, keening howl of a troll. A chorus of barking cries replied to their alpha. A horse whinnied, then screamed in terror, the sound ending in a sickening wet rip. One of the haulkats roared out, then another. The loud, ferocious sound drowned out everything else. The foot travelers, haulers, and the few caravan guards who were still alive all bungled about in chaos.
Captain Moyle looked toward the campfire just in time to see a head-sized rock smash into Amden Gore’s shoulder. The man was knocked into the fire and a swarm of firefly sparks went twirling up, lighting the campsite in an eerie orange glow.
A man the captain didn’t know, one of the bandits, he presumed, staggered and fell into the erratic light. One of his arms was a ruin of meat dangling from a protruding piece of shattered bone. From behind the man, the shadowy form of a rock troll scrabbled out of the darkness on all fours. It snatched him by the ankle, and dragged him screaming back into the night.
Captain Moyle darted toward the group of travelers by the fire. One of them was trying to get out from under the corpse draped over him. Amden Gore’s clothes were flaming now, and the sizzling smell of roasting meat was drawing the trolls closer to the fire.
In a flare of fiery light from the renewed blaze, Moyle saw a disheveled fan of golden hair at the bottom of the pile, just as a pair of fleeing horses leapt the heap and knocked him to the ground. A trio of howling trolls followed right behind the animals. Luckily, the captain had tumbled into the half-opened flap of one of the traveler’s tents. A young blacksmith’s apprentice, a boy not yet old enough to grow a beard, huddled in teary-eyed terror over his dead master. He gave a yelp and pushed himself into the corner of the canvas shelter.
“Shhhhh,” Moyle hissed with an index finger pressed to his lips. Seeing that it wasn’t a bandit or a troll coming for him, the boy heaved a sigh of relief. Moyle forced a reassuring smile and peeped back out where he had seen Gallarael’s golden locks splayed across the dirt. A cold shiver ran down his spine as something big and covered in fur stepped down just inches from his face. After it moved on, he swallowed his heart back down into his body. Where Gallarael had lain, under a pile of robed travelers, a single arrow-riddled body remained.
In the long silence that followed the attack, only the sound of Amden Gore’s fat sizzling on the fire, and the sickening noise of the trolls ripping and munching the flesh of the others, was left to fill the cloying night.
They came on clever ships of wood,
those that called themselves men.
They spread like mice through fertile fields
and overtook the land.
