01 - The Price of Talent (50 page)

              It took us till almost midday to reach the forest. At this point we were exhausted, both physically and emotionally. Meredith looked like she could break down at any moment, and truth be told, my feet were killing me. Still, without a word, we made our way into the forest. We were not following any particular path, we just knew we wanted to be well out of sight of the road before we stopped to rest.

              After a while we found a place in the woods we could settle down well out of sight of the road. The sun was right around its zenith, but given how tired we were, that didn’t really matter. When the decision was made, we both collapsed into a huddle in the hollow of a large tree. I basically just threw a blanket over us for extra warmth. No fire was lit, no food was eaten.

              It was only when we were safely huddle under a tree in the woods, safe from prying eyes, that Meredith allowed herself to grieve for her father.

Chapter 28.

              It was nightfall when we finally were ready to move again. Throughout the afternoon, I could hear the patrols walking up and down the road. We waited for night because we weren’t far enough into the woods that I was comfortable getting up and moving about under the light of the sun. It hadn’t taken Malvolio much time at all to get his guards organized and patrols on the roads. My guess is he found what we had done at the side gate and moved most of his men out of the city within an hour or two of our escape. This meant that Meredith and I needed to move with caution.

              Meredith had been silent and withdrawn all afternoon. I wasn’t sure when she was sleeping or just lying there in a state of near catatonic despair. Either way, I decided it was probably better to just be there for her and not talk too much. I continued to fear that anything I said to her would have been wholly inadequate.

              My sword had also been uncharacteristically silent. Usually when I had time to think, it took the opportunity to make fun of me or lecture me. I had half been expecting it to chime in and say “I told you this would all end in tears.” But strangely, it didn’t. Who knew an inanimate object had a sense of decorum and decency?

              Still, with the night fall giving us cover it was time to move. Fortunately, when I started to get up, Meredith got moving too. I had half feared she would not be able to, given her emotional condition. But she showed she was made of sterner stuff than I had anticipated by getting up and shouldering her back pack when I did. Without a word, we headed out into the woods.

              I decided on staying in the woods for a lot of reasons. The first, as I’ve already said, was that with the patrols on the roads, it was too much of a risk to use them. Secondly, I was hoping to stumble upon one of the old toe paths that my friends had used to move from ambush sites back to the longhouse. I didn’t expect to run into any of these today though, as we were too far north. But in the next day or two, I did hope that we would run into something.

              In the end it took us a couple of days of travel before I stumbled upon a trail of any kind. I couldn’t tell whether it was one that my friends had used, but it was heading in what I estimated to be the right direction, and it was better than bushwhacking through the underbrush. The first couple of days we spent doing this were slow going and exhausting.

              Once on the path, we made far better time. It still wasn’t as fast as our horse and cart had been, but it was faster than we had been moving through the woods. The path we were on had few forks. When there were forks, I scouted ahead a little on each to see which headed in the right direction. I felt that the time lost by scouting was better than the time that we could have lost by taking the wrong path.

              Finally, after a few more days of travel, I got to a part of the path that I did recognize. During this time, Meredith had stayed largely silent. She seemed to have withdrawn into herself and only said anything to me when she absolutely had to. I didn’t feel like there was any animosity there, just that she was dealing with a lot of emotions over the death of her father and that she wasn’t ready to speak yet.

              We proceeded down the path I had found for a day or two more. Finally though, I knew we were getting close. I recognized some path markers and, when I was able to climb a tree to get my bearings, the position of the hills and mountains looked close to what I remembered from my time with my friends. I estimated we had maybe a day more of travel before we got to the location of the longhouse.

              At the end of that night’s travel we settled in as we usually did, without a fire, under the tarp gnawing what we could off the frozen rations we had brought with us. Water was easier, we had been filling up our canteens with snow and keeping them inside our jackets so our body heat would melt the snow to water. Dangerous in the cold if you aren’t moving and creating a lot of heat, not so much when hiking through the woods and getting a decent chunk of exercise. Just as we were settling down to sleep, Meredith chose to break her silence.

“Tyr, with my father dead, what are we going to do?” She asked.

“Well, I’ve been steering us towards the longhouse I stayed at while I was a guest of my bandit friends,” I said.

“Yeah, I figured that,” she responded. “But what then? We know that the site was raided and your friends fled.”

“I’m hoping that we find something there that gives us a hint as to where they headed off to,” I replied. “If not, there should be enough stuff there for us to make a better shelter than this tarp and rethink our options.”

“I’m sorry I’ve been so withdrawn recently,” she said.

“Don’t worry about it. I went through something similar when I found out my parents had died,” I said. “Difference is, you and your father allowed me enough time to deal with things. You’ve been trekked all over the countryside through rough terrain. I’m sorry you haven’t had more time to grieve in peace.”

“Walking isn’t so involved an activity that I haven’t had time to think,” she said. “Besides, having a task to work at, even one as mundane as walking, helps keep you focused on what’s in front of you.”

              With that, we settled in for the morning. We both must have been tired because we fell soundly asleep.

              We both awoke with a start to the sound of dogs barking in the distance. From the look of the sky, it seemed to be about noon. I was going to write it off and go back to sleep except that I realized the noises were getting closer.

“Shit! Meredith, I think the patrols have caught up with us and are using dogs to track us,” I said.

“Yeah, I hear them too, we need to get moving!” She said with rising worry in her voice.

              I fully agreed with her assessment. I quickly folded up the tarp while she made sure our stuff was packed up tightly in our back packs. Then, when we were all set, we set off down the path to the longhouse at a jog.

              Fortunately for us, the path was relatively smooth. There was only a minimum of tree roots, fallen braches and rocks on it. This made it easier for us to make good time. Unfortunately, the same was true for the dogs. As we jogged on, the sound of dogs barking was slowly catching up with us.

              That afternoon was grueling. We jogged and ran as much as we could to keep distance between us and our pursuit. Unfortunately, we didn’t feel comfortable doing more than pausing occasionally to catch our breaths. It was late afternoon, or early evening, when we got to the clearing where the longhouse had been and paused to catch our breaths.

              As I peered through the underbrush at the edge of the clearing near our path, I saw what had become of the longhouse. The general structure of the building still stood, but it looked like it had been put to the torch. There were holes in the ceiling, part of it had collapsed, and most of the wooden beams were scorched. Still, we could probably make a halfway decent shelter out of the part that was still standing, and it would offer us some protection from the pack of dogs we had following us. Their masters on the other hand, could be more of a problem.

              After having surveyed the area, it didn’t look like there was a trap waiting for us in the clearing. Worse, with the dogs and their masters rapidly gaining ground on us, we didn’t have much choice but to seek shelter. So, without a word, we both nodded to each other and ran for the cover of the building.

              Fortunately for us, the door still worked, so we were able to get inside the building. This should have occurred to me before we made a run for it, that if the door didn’t work we would have been stuck out in the open without much cover. But given our pursuers were hot on our trail, this possibility didn’t occur to me until after we were inside. So it was good it was still in working order, otherwise things might have turned out quite badly.

              The inside of the longhouse was more scorched than the outside. Snow had accumulated near the walls and near part of the roof in the back that had collapsed when it was burned. Knowing we didn’t have much time till our pursuers arrived, we found what detritus we could to shore up our defenses. Mostly this involved using the burnt logs and furniture to make a makeshift barricade at the doors and windows.

              While we were trying to push together a defensible perimeter, I took a better look at the longhouse from the inside. The sleeping area in the back of the longhouse was completely demolished. But the kitchen and eating areas still stood. Meredith and I piled up what remained of the beds and furniture into a barricade blocking off the collapsed wing of the house. We also used a table to block the main entrance from the inside. Unfortunately, the wing that was burned down had many holes in the walls and no ceiling. This gave our pursuers many entrances from which to enter the house. This is why we had the barricade, but we did our best to block the biggest holes elsewhere. The final barricade was situated between the relatively open kitchen area and the eating area to create an opening from which I could fire spells. I also found a bow and some arrows buried under some detritus for Meredith, who was not as skilled at offensive magic as I was.

              From behind the barricade I could see out the holes in the wall into the woods to the south east. From the broken windows in the eating area we got a decent view of the rest of the clearing the longhouse was in. Unfortunately, we didn’t have to wait long before Meredith spotted the dogs running out of the woods and into the clearing. They milled about for a second or two before they followed our trail to the longhouse and the closed door. Then the dogs just milled around it barking.

              A short time later a group of patrolmen followed. They conversed for a second and then one left quickly, presumably to get backup. Not knowing what else to do, and having nowhere to run, Meredith and I had little we could do but watch as more people arrived. It didn’t take long. As more people arrived, they set up a defensive perimeter on the northern part of the clearing. And just as I thought things couldn’t get any worse, I saw another group arriving from the south.

              This group reinforced the defensive perimeter on the southern side. Just like that, we found ourselves surrounded. Once we were both sure that there was nothing we could do to better reinforce our own defenses, we settled in for a siege. We weren’t sure why the patrols hadn’t attacked us yet, but we weren’t going to lose the opportunity to get some rest. A long run through the forest and then frantically moving furniture and fallen beams to make a barricade is a ton of work, and we were both physically exhausted by it.

              I took the first watch that evening and let Meredith get some rest. She’d been through a lot recently, and I wanted her alert for her turn on watch. My watch was a long boring drag. The soldiers that had us surrounded seemed content to keep us pinned down in the remnants of the longhouse. I watched from various windows as they set camp, put their dogs on leashes and lead lines, and then started cooking dinner.

              I sat there, while nibbling on some of the remnants of our food supplies, which were still partially frozen, and smelled all the smells of dinner being made. Those bastards even found a place to cook bacon so the wind would send the smells into the longhouse. Anyone who wants to torture someone psychologically, you can do away with all that fear nonsense. What you need to do is run them all day, then cook bacon in front of them and not let them have any. I would have seriously considered surrendering at that point just to have some.

              Fortunately, they put away the food after a few hours. They set up watches and patrols and then headed for their tents. Around midnight, when I couldn’t keep my eyes open any more, I roused Meredith to take her turn on watch. As I settled down in a corner and wrapped myself in the tarp, my sword decided to break its long silence.

You weak, weak man. A little bacon smell and you practically run out to join your enemies?

What do you know of the joys of bacon? You’re a sword, you have no need of food.

Irrelevant, it doesn’t change the fact that a little cured meat had you drooling all over yourself.

You’ve been silent for a while. I doubt you’re breaking your silence just to tease me about my hunger and lack of self-discipline.

Well duh, kid! While I appreciate how important bacon is to you, I’m not talking now simply to tease you, though doing so brings me great joy.