“Digging?”
“Aye!” Loudin laughed.
His entire part in the plan hinged on whether Mikahl could hit his target on the very first shot. He hoped the castle born boy wouldn’t throw down his bow and flee, the way he had when the lizard had attacked his pack horse. Loudin wasn’t even sure he wanted to make this stand with Mikahl. What exactly was it he was risking his life for? A lizard skin? He knew he could easily take the boy’s horse, elude him, and the other pursuers, if he wanted to. He had lived in this forest for the last half dozen years and he knew its ways well. He wasn’t doing this just for the lizard skin, he decided. As much as he hated to admit it, he liked the boy. Something deep inside him was compelling him to protect Mikahl. What it was, he wasn’t sure, but the compulsion was there, and he couldn’t ignore it.
“If there are four or five of them, we might be setting a trap for ourselves,” Loudin said, in an explanation of his command to dig. “We can’t afford to put all of our coins in one pouch.”
Duke Fairchild had almost killed Tully on the spot, for being so ignorant as to stick his arm into a trap. He would have, but Tully’s keen tracking skills might still be needed. Something as simple as a silver coin had tricked the man. Now, his arm was a ruin, and it was his sword arm at that.
Duke Fairchild found himself impressed with the cleverness of his prey. The choice of baits laid in the jaws of the three traps, told him a lot about the two men he was after. Setting one of the traps to catch a man, was ruthless and smart. They had known they were being followed, and Tully’s scream had told them what sort of a predator was stalking them. He was just happy that Garth found the other traps. A horse could have easily been crippled there.
The Duke decided that it would be better to wait for daylight. There was no telling what other sort of traps the squire and his companion might’ve left for them. He considered it a pity that the lamp light was needed to tend to Tully’s arm. Its light would tell his prey that he was stopping, which, in turn, would give them a few more hours distance and the time they might need to set more pitfalls, or maybe even an ambush.
When the sun finally colored the forest an amber gray, they were already up and moving, and had been for awhile. Even the horses were eager to resume the pursuit. Tully’s arm had been splinted and wrapped tightly with pieces of torn canvas. The Duke had given him a dose of his personal elixir. It would dampen the fool’s pain and make his mind as sharp as Wildermont steel for awhile. Fairchild always kept some of the sweet medicine on hand, in case he was ever wounded in the field. An expensive blend of ground flower seeds, and Harthgarian herbs, mixed with fine brandy wine and honey. Only the wealthiest of men could afford the luxury of it. Tully would get no more of it after the squire was captured, no matter how badly he was hurting.
They made good time, even though they were being extremely cautious, and looking for more traps. The forest was still too spread out for an ambush, the Duke figured, so he pushed them on. Tully rode out in front, wincing, as his trotting horse jostled his wounded arm. Garth was next in line. Fairchild would let them find the trap if there was one. His level of awareness was increasing as the morning wore on. His blood was beginning to tingle with the thrill of the hunt, but his patience was wearing thin. He was just beginning to think that Tully had lost the trail, or maybe his dose of elixir had worn off, when the tracker all of a sudden reigned up his horse.
“They stopped here.” Tully pointed ahead, as Garth, then the Duke, gained his side.
Fairchild sensed deception here, and slowly scanned the area. It was still too open for an ambush, he decided. Nevertheless, he drew his sword quickly from its scabbard.
“Ready your bow,” he ordered Garth. Something in his guts was telling him to beware. “Tully, go search the area around us and tell us what you see.”
There were only three of them, Mikahl saw, with a flood of relief. He would soon have an easy shot on the one with his arm in a sling. The man was off of his horse and moving closer, as he inspected Loudin’s mocked-up camp.
If Loudin could take out one of the two still on horseback, then Mikahl felt certain that he would have time to draw and loose on the other one before he could get too close. Ironspike was leaning against the tree nearest him, but he didn’t want to have to draw it from its sheath and use it unless he had to. He was already going to have to explain why he had it to Loudin. The hunter had been struck speechless when he’d seen the jeweled hilt. Then, he had grown angry thinking he had conspired to help a common thief elude the sword’s proper owners. Only after Mikahl had sworn a blood oath that the sword wasn’t stolen, and had promised vehemently that he would tell the whole of his situation to Loudin if they survived this encounter, did the old hunter relent.
The fargin bastards are nearly standing on top of me, Loudin thought to himself. He hoped they weren’t too close for him to attack. He had heard the sound of steel ringing free from its scabbard. There is nothing else that even resembles the ringing hiss of quality steel being freed, and the sound electrified something in his blood. The other had a bow, he heard them say. That’s the one he would go after. He wished he knew how many of them there were. Even though he felt as if the boy had betrayed him somehow, he would do his best to keep these people’s arrows out of him. Just then, he heard the unmistakable thump of Mikahl’s arrow hitting the first man. A heartbeat later, Mikahl yelled, “THREE!”
For an instant, Mikahl felt wrong about putting an arrow into an unarmed, and unsuspecting man, but a glance at King Balton’s sword steeled him to the task. He stood up as calmly as you please, loosed his arrow at the startled fellow, and then yelled, “THREE!” so that Loudin would know how many they faced. The arrow he’d loosed, he saw, had gone most of the way through the wounded man’s chest.
Loudin burst from his shallow leaf covered grave, startling the swordsman’s horse, so that it charged right at Mikahl. The tattooed hunter’s spear drove up at Garth’s side, but only grazed him.
Mikahl’s heart was exploding in his chest. A wild-eyed destrier was almost on him, and its semi-armored rider was, of all people, the infamous Coldfrost Butcher. Mikahl recognized him, and panicked. He threw away the bow and grabbed Ironspike, and then dropped to the ground behind the lizard skin blind, and rolled. It was a foolish gamble of a move, made in haste, and Mikahl realized this as soon as he was committed to the action. The Duke’s horse wouldn’t try to leap the blind. It was too high, and the color and texture would confuse the animal. Mikahl could only hope that he rolled to the side opposite that which the horse chose to take around it. If they went the same way, then he was sure to be trampled. It was too late to stop when he saw that he had chosen wrong. All he could do was clinch his eyes closed, and wait to feel the battle horse’s steel shod hooves crushing into him.
By some stroke of luck, or maybe divine intervention, when Mikahl rolled into its path, the heavy horse leapt completely over him, instead of trampling him. He barely had time to get to his feet and draw Ironspike from its sheath. The terrifying man that King Balton himself had nicknamed, “The Butcher,” was already turned, and about to run him down.
Loudin managed to dodge the single arrow Garth loosed at him, but the man had the advantage of being mounted, and quickly spurred his horse out of Loudin’s weapon’s range. Rather than try to dodge the next arrow that Garth was already nocking, Loudin launched his weapon at the horse, and charged. The blade of this spear hit the horse in its rump, and sunk deep enough to make it buck, and scream. Garth was thrown from the saddle, and ended up landing badly. Before he could get himself up, Loudin was there to deliver a running boot to his face. The kick had enough force behind it to render Garth unconscious, but Loudin took no chances and pounced on the fallen man. In one fell swoop, Loudin drew his dagger, and cut Garth’s throat wide open.
Duke Fairchild’s eyes gleamed with murderous intent, as he casually spurred his horse into a slow trot towards the squire. He would have to wound him, and then kill the other man. Lord Brach, and the wizard, Pael, wanted the boy alive, and at least able to speak. The man on top of Garth would die though. The Duke recognized him as one of the many poachers that plagued the Reyhall Forest. He wasn’t the unknown conspirator that his lord wanted to find, he was just a hunter the boy had come across in the woods. The squire would get to watch the slow death of his companion. It would go far towards deterring any attempts the boy might make to escape. Fairchild would enjoy the slow kill, and watching the boy’s will break.
When Mikahl pulled the sword free from its scabbard, he felt its perfectly balanced weight in his hands. He had brandished it before, in the privacy of the King’s Royal Weapons Closet, while he was cleaning it, but he hadn’t unsheathed it since King Balton had died. Dropping the scabbard, he took the leather wrapped hilt in both hands, and got into the proper stance for fighting a mounted attacker from the ground. For all its familiarity, the sword somehow felt different. A strange vibration was coming from deep inside the blade. He could feel it in the bones of his wrists and arms. It had never done that before. He nearly dropped the weapon, as the strange sensation grew into a visible tremor. He tried to ignore it and gripped the hilt even tighter. Was it his own fear that was causing
