“But, Gregon, if we get these things off of my ankles it won’t be so hard for me to do that thing you like so much.” She purred and licked her slightly parted lips with half-lidded eyes. Her heavy breasts were on full display and she squeezed her arms at her sides, making them swell.
The oaf cursed under his breath, but she knew she had him.
“We’ll go back and pilfer the lot of them bodies, wench,” Gregon snarled. “But I’m keeping the coin. I’ll use that slaver’s tools to get them shackles off your legs if we don’t find the key.” Gregon smiled a broken yellow grin. “After that, your pretty mouth better be keepin’ the promises that came out of it. If’n it don’t, I’ll bust it up.”
Captain Moyle didn’t wait for the mist to clear before sending Darbon out to search for a horse. The boy did as he was told, but only until he was out of the captain’s sight and lost in the foggy dawn. After that, Darbon ran blindly away from the camp and the mean old captain who meant him harm. Around a cut of rocky crags, and down a lush green, gently sloping hill, he ran. Through a thicket of thorny growth and past a gurgling brook, never seeing more than a dozen feet in front of him, he ran, and ran, and ran. Then he heard a noise behind him. Turning in mid- stride to see what it was, he found himself being pursued by one of the giant haulkattens. It pounced just as Darbon stumbled. The boy screamed, and then hot breath and clawed paws engulfed him as if he were no more than a baby rat to a castle mouser.
Captain Moyle found a horse and, after hearing the boy scream, figured him for dead. He’d probably fallen into a ravine, or gotten bitten by a snake. It didn’t matter, though. The fool boy wouldn’t survive in these parts alone, not for more than a few hours anyway.
The captain went back to the camp and took the time to load up a fat pack of rations, several water skins and a pair of fully stuffed quivers to go with his longbow. He waited there, thinking how much like a feast boar the slaver’s corpse smelled, until finally the sun burned the mist away.
Hearing nothing more from the boy, he hurried out of the camp to follow the haulkatten’s trail. Oddly, only a few hundred yards from the camp, he came across a fresh set of horse tracks. Upon further investigation he found that two horses had veered off to the south. The tracks were deep and defined enough that he felt certain the horses were ridden.
He doubted anyone other than the bandits would have left the trail for the Wilds. The homesteaded lands to the north were the safer route to take. As if to reinforce his thoughts, he came across one of the trails the haulkattens had made leaving the camp going north. With a self-satisfied grin, he heeled his horse into a trot, and told himself that the chase had begun.
Not long after, Gregon and Matty plodded back up the trail into the camp. The sun’s warmth was ripening the corpses, and things were starting to buzz and flap about in a frenzy of carrion delight. Crows and fat green flies leapt from their feasts in noisy clouds, and big, thick-skinned buzzards screeched and opened their wings, hoping to scare away whatever it was that had come to threaten their meal. Matty leaned forward and heaved up a gutful of bile when she saw what lay under the hungry birds: half of a man here, an arm, shoulder and head there, and a half-eaten horse between them.
She could tell that Gregon had to hold down his gorge, too. He went about shooing the buzzards away so he could roll the bodies and loot their pouches. Matty went to a dead haulkatten’s pack frame and starting searching it. Most of the supplies had been ransacked. She did find a small sack of coins tucked next to a head-sized piece of iron ore, but she had to leave the prize when Gregon came stomping up behind her.
“The key,” he chuckled. “The slaver kept it with his coppers. I found him and his pouch charred to a crisp. Hell, wench, his arse was still sizzling in the coals.” He wiped some gore from his hands on a jerkin he had picked up. “I hope you’re ready to hold up your end of the bargain.”
Matty kept herself from vomiting again while Gregon knelt down behind her and unfastened the steel-banded clasps. She took in a deep breath and a thought struck her like a bolt of lightning. The last thing she wanted at that moment was his filthy sex. She was sickened, but thrilled as the first binding fell away. She bent down. Using the nub of her wrist and her good hand she hefted a chunk of ore, turned, and slammed it down into Gregon’s upturned grin with all she had. The only thing scarier than the way the piece of stone tore into the man’s flesh and bone, was the way that he stood, roared, and backhanded her right off of her feet. She tried to get up and run, but he was on her like a pouncing lion. Without hesitation, he rolled her onto her back and put his hands around her neck.
She felt her throat being crushed and fought futilely to breathe. Blood ran from his broken nose and mouth in thick streams. One of his eyes looked off to the side, while the other glared murder at her.
She beat at him with her fist and her stumped wrist, but it was no use. Blackness and the need to draw breath slowly overwhelmed her. In a last-ditch effort to break his grasp she twisted and flailed, but it was too late. Her air-starved body had grown too weak to resist. Oddly, the last thing she saw before blackness consumed her was a huge shadow falling across her and her killer. After that, there was nothing.
CHAPTER FIVE
Far to the east they trace their lines
from Harthgar and Dakahn.
They’ve pinkened skin and dullard eyes
but their will is iron hard.
“Can’t we go around?” Gallarael asked as they finished off an afternoon meal of dried beef and started packing up their gear. The past two days they’d seen nothing but rolling foothills marked with small copses of elm, oak and pine. Every so often, huge outcroppings of grey stone seemed to grow out of the earth like jagged boils on emerald skin. Not too far ahead of them, they could see the dark tree line of the Wildwood.
“If you want to be out here for another turn of the moon or more we could go around,” Vanx replied with a shake of his head. He had to admit the stretch of forested valley that spread out below them did look daunting. To go around it would take weeks.
“My da once told me that no one ever comes back out of the Wildwood to tell what’s in it.” This from Trevin, and though he said the words jokingly, his expression told Vanx that he was afraid.
Vanx gave the dark forest another look and grinned. He’d left the island of Zyth to explore the world beyond. He was on a quest of enlightenment, a ritual that all young Zythian men undertook as they came of age. Most Zythians traveled by ship to the distant lands of Harthgar and Zarn where their race has deep-rooted cities and safe havens. Most humans, including Parydonians, had a mistrust of Zyths. Only the fact that Vanx didn’t look Zythian allowed him to roam Parydon without having to suffer the racism and underlying ill will of men.
There was no open hatred between the races or their kingdoms, and both traveled freely in the other’s realms, but the undercurrent of the times made for many a tense situation. The Zyths disliked the way the human population multiplied and spread like a plague. The humans were ever jealous of the Zythians’ crafting skills and long lives. Still, they’d managed to get along without warring with each other; but this, Vanx had been taught, was only because the humans hadn’t yet tried to settle on the Isle of Zyth.
Vanx chuckled out loud as the words of one of his old lesson masters came to him. “Humans will take root in any place that will allow them, save for those places they fear they cannot prevail.” The only three pieces of land
