Forest For The Trees (Book 3) (59 page)

“I only meant…”  Marik stared at Dietrik helplessly. 
“So, what do you want to do?”

“I want to crawl into my bloody cot and sleep until
next spring.  Being a mercenary was never a safety-net occupation, but this has
gone far beyond the dangers in the job description.”

“This is a pretty unusual situation.”

“Each of our fighting seasons so far could be called
that.  You need me to keep you out of worse trouble than you can handle.”

A slight grin twitched Marik’s lips.  “Since when have
I ever
not
been in trouble, even with you along for the ride?”

Dietrik declined a comment.  He merely shook his head
disgustedly and trouped back to the larger group at Marik’s elbow.

“Wyman!  Where—gods!  Caresse!”

Marik halted as if his flesh were instantly
transformed to marble.  Caresse squatted on her ankles beside the equine
remains, left arm wrapped around her knees, right hand holding a stick with
which she probed the hairy slime.  Her expression recalled village children who
were at once fascinated and revolted by a gristly artifact they had uncovered. 
One of her eyes squinted shut while her nose wrinkled, her tongue curling from
between her teeth as she poked the mess with short jabs.

“Doh-ah?  This is fairly nasty, so it is.”

“Then leave it alone!  Where’s Wyman?”

“By the tree line.  He wants to keep a watch out,
indeed.”

She prodded her stick into the jelly near where a
stirrup had sunk into the congealed flesh.  Marik quickly fled when she fished
up the repulsive material in a gluttonous strand, reminiscent of a pudding’s
skin, with gleeful repugnance.

Dietrik made only a single comment.  “Mate, if we both
survive this madness, when we get home, you are going to spend however much
coin it takes to purchase my rapier from Sennet once and for all.  That will be
the
least
of your debt to me.”

*        *        *        *        *

Marik’s worries about overrunning the Arronaths melted
away along with his exhortations to proceed sedately when it became obvious
that they needed to run in order not to fall further behind.  Dietrik,
exercising his self-control, waited for Marik to realize the obvious on his
own; they hardly had need for a cautious advance when the men they chased were
mounted, whereas they crossed the land on foot.

The trail left by the black-armored soldiers was easy
enough to follow.  Too easy.  Less than a candlemark after splitting with
Wyman’s northbound group, they were forced to dash into the woods when a Taur
group pounded unexpectedly from behind.

Marik’s heart felt like a jackrabbit being chased by a
wolf pack.  They barely gained the trees in time to avoid being spotted.  Only
the howling loosed by the animals had alerted Marik soon enough to quickly
check their rear from an etheric vantage.

They watched from a tangle of wild shrubs.  Dietrik
sustained several additional scratches on top of the scrapes from being thrown
off his mount.  He kept his lips drawn tight despite the bloody trickles
painting his face in gory lines.

A fast count revealed sixteen of the monstrous
beasts.  Twenty additional soldiers accompanied them including six
white-robes.  They followed the path tromped through the grass by the forerunners.

Dietrik walked out to the wider swath cut through the
wild land, standing in the middle to gaze after the Taurs, fists balled against
his hips.  “If you still insist on trodding along after
that
, then
you’ve gone absolutely barking, mate!”

“We must find out what they’re up to,” Marik replied,
a heavy boulder weighing down the statement.  “Torrance will need to know.”

They continued down the track.  It was so wide and
trampled a blind man could have followed it with ease.  In the gloom heralding
the coming night, Dietrik asked, “Are your wits clear, mate?  And don’t look
sideways at me!  Think on it seriously.  You are not trying to undo a failing
you believe you are guilty of, are you?  Because would-be heroes are always the
first to be cut down.”

“I’ve never gone searching for fame or glory!”

Dietrik leveled a stern glare that cut to the bone.

“Well… maybe my overconfidence led me astray once,”
Marik stammered.  “I told you I would never be stupid enough to repeat that.”

“That aside, my question remains.”

“I’m doing what I think is right.”

“Right for you?  Or for an ideal that mercenaries have
no part of?”

“Just…right.  Dietrik, maybe you should go straight
back with Wyman after all.  He didn’t look happy at having to travel through
hostile territory with a bunch of unpredictable mages.”

“Lynn and Caresse will look after his interests in
regards to the city mages.  We both know it, and you should as well.  Kings
look after one another, which is why you should know better than to suggest
it.”

“I’m uneasy.  The first group was worrisome as it
was.  The second could mean any number of consequences, none of them good. 
This is feeling too much like a counterforce organizing to smash our resistance
while it is still in disarray from the last major battle.”

“Then why do they ride south?  The best course would
be to angle northeast and strike our camp from the rear.”

“I don’t know.  Which is why we have to find out what
they are up to.”

“Scouting only,” Dietrik intoned with finality. 
“Surveillance from a distance.  It is not to us to stop or disrupt any enemy
actions.”

“We only have the strength to take on four or five. 
Of course we will only get close enough to learn what they are up to.”

“Four or five
men
,” returned Dietrik.  The
sharp edge to his statement made it clear he wanted no part of the Taurs.  “We
have no chance against their pets without your ruddy sword.  What happened to
it anyway?”

“Not sure.  Wyman saved my life at the overlook.  I
nearly slid down a slope off the mountain when he stopped me.  I suppose my
blade must have kept going over the edge.  All I’ve got is my old companion.” 
He patted his regular blade hanging at his side.

“A bloody waste of too much coin,” Dietrik snorted. 
“All that silver thrown into a custom blade, and you got how much use from it?”

“Only one serious fight,” came the gloomy admission. 
“If an avalanche fell on top of it, there is nothing left but a twisted lump.”

“You go through blades faster than any I’ve heard tell
of.”

“I hadn’t thought about that, but you’re right.  It
seems the bigger the sword is, the quicker it gets destroyed.”

Dietrik pointed at Marik’s weapon.  It was a near
duplicate of the first he had taken from Sennet’s armory their first winter. 
“You’ve had better use from that ordinary weapon than from the other two
combined.  Best you stick with what suits a merc’s station.”

Marik offered no response.  He allowed Dietrik to take
the silence for whatever answer pleased him, but quietly he doubted.  Sennet’s
custom sword, though unwieldy and too bulky to carry normally, had converted
him from solo combatant to a one-man army during the night raid on
Drakesfield.  If there were only a way to carry it with ease wherever he went,
he would gladly shell out whatever coin it took to birth an offspring weapon
from Sennet’s skilled hands…

“What fancies are passing through that cheese-filled
head of yours?” Dietrik demanded with suspicion.  “There is a mite too much
dreaminess in your eye for me to feel comfortable.”

Startled, Marik cast about for a lie, blurting out the
first topic that came to mind.  “Ilona.  Kerwin’s inn must be nearly finished,
if it isn’t already.”

Dietrik softened.  “Yes.  You would do well to return
to Kingshome if only for her.  The likes of Marik Railson has no business
winning a prize of her silverweight, but perhaps it is a sign from the heavens
that you have more business in life than following a force a hundred times your
size.”

“That sounds like jealousy.”

“Then you have failed to learn much about me in the
years of our friendship, mate.  She is a fair enough looker by most standards—”

“Better than ‘fair enough’ by most!” Marik heatedly
shot back.

“Given,” Dietrik shrugged in return.  “But there is
entirely too much fang in her for my liking.  Give me a softer hand than a
piercing tongue any day.  I suppose you can’t help being masochist enough to
fall hard on her claws.”

“What gives you call to make a crack like that?”

“Your choice of women, the way you torture your body
in your daily training, how you keep digging yourself into dealings with
Celerity, Tybalt and any other blighter with the power to make your life
miserable…”

They argued fiercely until nightfall, each digging
into old wounds as friends are wont to do, renewing their close bond of
fellowship the entire way.  Each could sense within the other a relief at
having found their friend following a cataclysmic tragedy.  Further danger
might lurk in the future.  For the present they enjoyed each other’s
personality, the parts that had drawn them into such deep friendship years ago.

After nightfall they discovered a blinking dandelion
patch winked in the blackness.  Marik and Dietrik stayed far back from the
campfires.  They whispered at cross purposes the whole while, Marik failing to
deduce any intentions harbored by the soldiers.  The only fact he could be
certain of was that the man Xenos, if indeed it had been his presence the mages
sensed earlier, could not be with the camp.  That overwhelming presence was
absent.  He must be further ahead.

In the morning they continued the track.  Dietrik
shared the provisions he had horded from the supply wagons.  It had been
fortunate that the packs were thrown off his mount along with Dietrik.  They
would have no stomach for food recovered from the primordial sludge that the
horse had become.  The only downside, which Dietrik took harder than Marik, was
that the silver hand mirror of Celerity’s had shattered during the plummet.

No change developed until noontime when the trail they
pursued unhesitatingly breached the outer trees of the Rovasii Forest.

“Past experience suggests we throw the entire fiasco
over at this point,” Dietrik proclaimed, gazing at the trees without love.

Marik studied the forest while a tempest of
conflicting emotions whirled in cyclonic fury through him.  He felt as if the
countless possibilities from which reality was constructed had splintered away
from the recesses of disproven probability.  The exigencies of Lady Fate had
filled his flesh with multiple Marik Railsons, crowding out the simple
mercenary he had been intended to be.

Crown-General Marik still believed it was his
responsibility to plunge into the Rovasii in order to uncover whatever schemes
the enemy forces were engaging in.  Mage Marik wanted nothing whatsoever to do
with that.  The terrifying presence
he
had sensed should be kept well
clear of.  It would be suicidal madness to enter an arena where visibility was
restricted while he still dared not drift the etheric too close to the stranger
Xenos.  Mercenary Marik had no business mixing in this entire affair in the
first place, as Dietrik continually pointed out.  A simple vote generated a
two-to-one motion in favor of returning to Ilona and abandoning this
foolishness.

Yet the crown-general overruled the other two on the
argument that a professional put the job first and personal considerations
second.  Purging Galemar of the Arronaths took precedence over whatever tiny
life Marik might piece together.

The backdrop to each argument rose before his eyes in
deceptive innocence.  Here stood the Rovasii, about which countless horror
stories were regaled in the towns populating its fringes.  He had been lucky to
escape it once without running afoul of the forest’s otherworldly menace.  It
could be that the task of defeating the Arronaths had already been handled for them. 
Their mangled bodies might be discovered in the coming years by courageous
hunters willing to risk the dangers.  Did he truly mean to dare the forest’s
interior a second time?

“Hey, why do you think they went in there?”

“If I could read minds, I would be making my fortunes
elsewhere,” Dietrik replied.

“What I meant was, this is the second time they’ve
approached the Rovasii.”

“I would hardly calling it an ‘approach’ when they
bloody marched straight into it.”

“Right.  But the battle led by the Arm attacked a
large encampment right where we’re standing.  Sloan called it a blitz.  A hard
drive south as fast as possible to disrupt the enemy’s structure.  But this
group came back.”

“And no simple patrol either,” Dietrik agreed.  “Else
they would do an about-face to return along the patrol path.”

“So what is happening?  I can’t figure out what these
Arronaths are thinking.”

“Perhaps they are after the haunts.  Or whatever
tommyknockers are lurking in the forest’s depths.  They have enslaved the
monstrous Taurs and their oversized dragonflies.  I would guess they are
looking to expand their special forces with new fairy creatures.”