Swift running footfalls, crunching across the ground behind him.
He whipped about, one hand reaching up for the pommel of the Ravensfriend. Saw Eril sprinting down from the top of the rise to meet him, one hand flung out, chopping the air westward.
Riders to the west!
Jagged awareness, like waking in terror from a flandrijn pipe dream. The distant drumming fell out of his head and into the morning quiet, resolved into what it was: a sound he knew from half a hundred battlefields past the tremor through the ground of an armored cavalry detachment at the gallop.
Eril was bellowing now.
Ware riders!
Around Ringil, the mercenaries heard, too, and took up the cry
Ware riders!
Riders!
Fucking heavy horse!
Bawled warnings, chaining together like lightning before the storm, and then, suddenly, the random crisscross of sprinting men, leaping and kicking their way through the huddled slaves, heading for the tree line, for horses maybe, ultimately for anything the horizon might offer. Ringil tried to grab one of them as he pelted past, was spun around by the man s momentum and left grabbing after a fistful of empty air. The man ran on, still bawling.
Heavy horse!
Ringil had seen it put more seasoned men than these to flight. Armored cavalry for anyone who d ever had to face some, it held an ingrained terror worse than any sorcery. Back before the rise of the Yhelteth imperium and the foundation of the League to stand against it, heavy horse was the deciding factor time and again in the endless squabbling wars between the Naom city-states. It smashed through defensive formations; it shattered morale. Even the Majak had been known to break under armored cavalry assault. Expecting this bunch of castoffs to hold together, well he gave it up as pointless, hurried up the slope to meet Eril instead. Turned about to stare westward as Eril pointed again.
There. Left of the bluff, where the tree line breaks.
No detail yet, but Ringil saw the pale boiling of the dust cloud. No doubt about it.
Hinerion, he said grimly. Word got through, then.
Yeah, looks that way. Eril eyed the dust, and the wooded terrain that separated them from where it was rising. Heavy horse won t cut through those trees, they re too dense. They ll have to keep to the road.
Ringil nodded. Gives us about time to saddle a horse.
Already saddled. Up behind the tents. Come on, I ve got the old man watching them.
They went up the slope at a run. Found the old man from Hreshim s Landing stood between the heads of two shaggy-maned mares, face tilted down under a grubby skirmish ranger s cap. He wasn t holding the reins, but he had one hand pressed lightly to the side of each animal s head and he was crooning to them, some garbled gibberish that put Ringil s teeth on edge. He looked up as his commander approached, and the sunlight gleamed red off one eye.
So it s not to be a stand, sire?
No it s not, Ringil told him shortly.
A pity. An old man might imagine himself dying well, fighting at the right hand of the hero of Gallows Gap.
Ringil stopped, peered suspiciously into the old man s weather-tanned features. As far as he remembered, neither he nor Eril had mentioned his true identity to any of the mercenaries they d recruited over the previous weeks. But the old man just looked innocently back at him, face devoid of apparent mockery or deceit.
Got no time for this shit, Gil.
This isn t Gallows Gap, old man. Voice tight with memory. And the war is over. We ve done what we came here to do. We re leaving.
The old man s head lowered in deference. Very good, my lord. And your mounts are ready for you, as you see. The best two I could secure.
Past the old man and the two animals, Ringil caught sight of something on the ground. He stepped sideways around the right-hand horse for a better look. Saw three tumbled corpses by their mismatched weapons and ragged apparel, members of his own mercenary troop. The other horses had moved back against their tether lines to give the dead men as wide a berth as possible, and now they blew and whinnied and shifted nervously about, in marked contrast with the two the old man had selected. Ringil stared at the corpses, then at the old man s sword, still sheathed across his back in echo of the way Ringil wore the Ravensfriend. He frowned.
And your own mount? he asked.
The old man offered him a crooked grin. Oh, I shall not require a horse to evade capture, my lord. I have other and better means.
Yeah? Such as? no fucking time for this, Gil
But the old man only grinned again, and touched the brim of his skirmish ranger s cap in silence, as if that were answer enough. Ringil shrugged and took the reins of the horse on the left, ushered her about for space, and swung up into the saddle. He doubted the old man would easily evade capture, ranger training or no not if Hinerion s border watch had been roused as it seemed. But he was in no mood to argue the point. He had his own escape to think about.
Well, I m obliged to you then. Ringil raised a hand to his brow in salute. Good luck.
And to you, my lord.
The old man put a sweeping bow behind his words, and once again Ringil could not be sure if he was being mocked or not. He looked across at Eril, now also in the saddle, but the Marsh Brotherhood man gave no sign he saw anything amiss. Ringil shook it off whatever it was and urged his horse forward.
Look to your own safety, old man, he said gruffly. While you still can.
He passed the corpses, glanced down at one of them and then wished he hadn t. He jerked his gaze back to the tree line, scanning for the broken pine tree and the hidden defile it marked out, the path that had brought them to the encampment from the river. It was a goatherd s track, not made for riding, but with a little care and good horsemanship they should pass.
Yeah, we d better. Ringil s mouth twisted sourly. Don t like the alternatives much.
The distant drum of the approaching cavalry was distant no longer, and as he looked north to where the road emerged from the thinning woodland, Ringil thought he spotted the flash of desert sunlight on armor through the foliage. He kicked his horse into a canter.
The old man stood and watched them go. Smiling faintly.
Down on the flat ground, the slaves who had not run earlier were milling about in a listless simulacrum of the panic among those who had freed them. Ringil and Eril cantered through the mess, heading for the marker pine. Mostly, those on the ground got out of their way, but one young mercenary Ringil recognized him from the queue for Snarl stood his ground, brandishing a battle-ax without much sense that he really knew how to use it. There was a cheap helm askew on his head, and his face was white with fear. He stepped in, yelling.
Don t you fucking leave us, you fatherless piece of
Ringil nudged his horse left, booted the mercenary full in the chest as he passed him, and rode on.
At the tree line, Eril reined about and stared back. He shook his head.
Armored cavalry s going to make mincemeat out of those guys.
Yeah, well they ve been paid, Ringil growled, and ducked his head as his horse picked up the start of the path.
But as the trees closed around them, he thought back to the corpses around the old man, and he shivered. One of the mercenaries had fallen faceup, neck lolling to the side, throat tugged stickily open on the long, neat slash that had bled him out. No different from a hundred other sneak killings Ringil had seen over the years. But the man s eyes were frozen wide open in the grime of his face, and his expression
In over a decade of soldiering, Ringil had never seen horror so clearly printed onto a set of human features.
A low-hanging tree bough brushed his shoulder. Sunlight speared between the branches, dappled the ground. Somewhere in the quiet of the forest, a bird called to its mate.
