Lorik The Protector (Lorik Trilogy) (26 page)

Vera rode hard, kicking the horse to greater and greater speed. And then the worst happened: the horse tripped over the body of a slain refugee and stumbled. Vera went flying through the air and crashed hard on the ground. She didn’t move at first. Her whole body hurt, and then she felt a hand grasp her hair and pull.

She screamed, her hands going up and then her body rising as her feet struggled to take her weight. She was suddenly looking into the painted face of a Norsik warrior. She had a knife on her belt, but just as she drew the blade the raider knocked it out of her hand.

“
Sor koggie!
” he said in a ragged voice.

Then he backhanded Vera so hard her world went black. She wasn’t sure how long she was unconscious, but when she woke up she was being dragged over the rough ground. Her hands were tied together, and although she couldn’t see what was happening, she could hear the sounds of slaughter all around her.

Hot tears sprang up in her eyes. One eye was swelling shut and burned from her salty tears. She could hear other people sobbing around her, women and children. When the raider stopped dragging her and dropped her hands, she struggled to sit up and look around. She could see other people, women mostly, but a few children, too, all tied like she was. There were raiders scattering the belongings of the people who had followed her from the fort and the villages she had passed through. She wondered where Liam was. Her beloved would have died rather than allow her to be taken as a slave. Grief for Liam crushed her heart and she, too, began to sob.

It was at least an hour before the sun came up, although Vera had no real concept of the amount of time that passed. With the light of day came the crushing realization of what was happening. The raiders ate the food that she and the other refugees had brought with them. Then they rounded up their prizes like cattle and tied their hands together in long lines. The raiders talked in jubilant voices as they prepared to take their captives back to Norsik. Vera used the time to look for Stone’s body. There were dead women and men, almost all elderly, everywhere she looked. The Norsik had taken only the healthy women and most of the children. She saw a few fallen raiders but not many. The Norsik left all the dead behind, including their own, and began marching the captives north.

Vera could see that the Norsik had divided themselves into two groups and were going in two different directions. Only about half of the raiders were returning north with the captives, while the rest continued south, looking for more plunder. The wagons were filled with the treasures the raiders had been carrying, and since the horses had been scattered or slain, the raiders themselves pulled the wagons.

They moved slowly at first. The other women with Vera were exhausted and in shock. Grief lay like a heavy weight around their necks. They marched all day, returning to the northern road that would take them through Timmons Gate and past Fort Utlig. A small glimmer of hope remained for Vera. She knew that if Lorik were still alive there was a chance he would intercept the raiders and win her freedom. It was a desperate hope, but it was all she had.

Grief for Stone rose up in waves. One moment she would be okay; the next moment wracking sobs consumed her. Some of the captives were wounded or hurt. Vera’s body was sore from being thrown from her horse and her left eye was completely swollen shut, but she was still able to keep up the demanding pace set by her captives. Some of the other girls weren’t. After being beaten bloody, anyone who slowed the march north was killed.

Vera tried her best to encourage the women and children around her. The raiders didn’t seem to mind her talking as long as they kept moving. When evening finally came, they made camp. The raiders ate and drank, but the captives were only allowed to drink for a short time from a nearby stream. They received no food and were forced to sleep and even relieve themselves with their hands still tied together. The next morning they were taken back to the stream at dawn, and then the march resumed. Vera’s muscles all hurt, she felt like she had sand in every joint, and her face ached terribly. But she did her best to keep up.

The raiders abused the weakest captives, but the rest were untouched. Vera had known rough men who knew nothing of intimacy and she thought she could have survived if the Norsik raiders had abused her, but apparently they were reluctant to damage their healthy captives. Vera guessed that there were just under a hundred women and children healthy enough to survive a long march.

They were finally given food, which they were forced to eat as they walked. Her wrists bled from the ropes, but her heart hurt most of all. When they passed the first smoldering remains of one of the villages, she felt faint. More plunder that had been left at the village was piled into the wagons, and some of the healthier women were forced to push the wagon. Fortunately the road wasn’t steep and the wagon rolled along the hard-packed earth easily enough.

Occasionally they passed bodies of people who had been killed along the road, but most of the unfortunate Ortisians had been burned in their settlements. On the third day they came to the scene of a massacre that gave Vera her first taste of hope in days. They had been marching all day and it was midafternoon. Ahead of them they saw flocks of vultures, some on the road and others still circling low in the sky. Vera wondered at first what had happened, but when they got close to the massacre, the Norsik stopped the march. The captives were closely guarded, but several of the raiders wandered among the bodies, shooing the carrion birds away. They spoke in a language that was utterly foreign to Vera, but she could tell by their body language and the tone of their voices that they were angry.

When they finally started marching again, they left the main road and circled around the massacre. Vera and the others strained to see what had happened, but the raiders cursed them and beat some until the women and children stopped trying to look. But it was obvious that whatever group had died in the road, the Norsik were concerned about it. That could only mean that a group of the raiders had been killed, Vera thought.

The women were afraid to talk while they were near the bodies, but later that evening after they had made camp, the rumors started.

“Perhaps it was King Oveer’s soldiers,” someone suggested.

“I think it was a group of raiders,” another woman said.

“If it was Norsik, who would have done it?” asked a third woman.

“They probably killed each other,” said another woman. “They’re savages after all.”

“It could have been the volunteers at Fort Utlig,” Vera said.

“I thought you said they were sent out to warn the villages,” the first woman said.

“They were, but they may have come back together. They may be fighting the Norsik,” Vera said. “There is still hope.”

“How can you hold out hope?” one of the women asked. “Your man was killed. My whole village was destroyed. What hope can we have except for a quick death?”

“Don’t talk that way,” Vera said. “There is always hope. We just have to stick together. We have to stay healthy and look out for each other.”

“Sure, until they sell us and we become slaves,” said the woman. “You know what they do to slaves, don’t you?”

“No, and neither do you,” Vera argued. “And fearing the worst won’t help anyone.”

“Who died and left you in charge?” the woman said, but the old phrase brought tears to her eyes.

“I’m not in charge,” Vera said. “But I’m not giving up, either. The reason they made us go around those bodies was because they were Norsik, I’m sure about that. They don’t want us to see that they can be beaten. They don’t want us to rise up against them. We have to hang on to hope. We don’t know what the future holds. We have to be ready to look out for ourselves.”

“She’s right,” said one of the other women.

“Someone killed a band of raiders,” someone else said, whispering the hopes of all the captives. “That means there is still someone willing to fight for us.”

“That’s right,” Vera said. “That’s absolutely right.”

That night Vera dreamed of Hassell Point. She was back at the Boggy Peat, the tavern for locals where she had worked out of a room in the back. She offered her customers comfort and companionship, Lorik being chief among them. She dreamed she was serving Lorik drinks when a stranger arrived in town. He had blood dripping from his knuckles when he came in. He drank the strong rice liquor they called saka in the marshlands. And he beat down two outlaws who tried to bully him, in a way that seemed almost effortless.

Then the dream changed, and he was sitting in her room in the Boggy Peat, his eyes like liquid pools of kindness and affection. In her mind she knew he was a dangerous man, but he wasn’t an outlaw or a brute. She heard herself laughing with him and mentally dueling with him. It was a battle of wits and she was falling in love. It was happening so fast. After knowing so many men intimately, after refusing offers of marriage from good prospects in the Marshlands year after year, she was falling hard and fast for this dangerous stranger. The giddiness was more intoxicating than any drink.

Then the dream changed again. The dream was suddenly dark. She could see Liam, the love of her life, her dangerous stranger, covered in blood, lying dead and forgotten. His eyes were open and his skin, where it wasn’t stained red with blood, was so pale and cold it made her shiver. She stared into his eyes and the giddiness was replaced with grief. He was gone, the spark snuffed out much too soon. It was her biggest fear come true. Her parents had died when she was young. Lorik’s parents, too, when she was barely old enough to be on her own. Everyone she cared for had left her. Tears, hot and salty, streamed from her eyes and dripped down onto Liam’s face. He was as cold as his common name, his flesh as hard. He was Stone now and forevermore.

Stone had come to his senses in the hours just before dawn. At first he hadn’t remembered what had happened, but then it all came back in a rush. He stayed perfectly still even though his body was stiff and aching. His knee hurt more than anything, but his head ached so much he was afraid he would throw up, and the blood all over his body was drying and itching. He was cold, too, but luckily he wasn’t shivering.

He felt the sun come up, felt the light penetrating his eyelids. Still he didn’t move. He breathed as softly as possible, especially when he heard people moving around him. He was afraid he would be discovered when the Norsik raiders came to see to the bodies of the three men he had killed in his last fight, but they were ignored. He heard the cries of the women and children and he wondered desperately if Vera was among them, but he couldn’t risk finding out. He knew his knee was in bad shape. There was no way he could escape the raiders if he was discovered, and he doubted that he could rescue her even if he hadn’t been. He was one man and the raiders numbered more than a hundred.

The hours crawled by at an agonizingly slow pace. He heard the wagon moving, heard the supplies being loaded, heard half the raiding party marching one way and the slave masters carrying the captives away in a different direction. He waited even when he saw the shadows of the carrion birds flashing over him through his eyelids. He waited until the birds’ jubilant cries were the only sounds he could hear. He guessed it was midday when the first bird landed on him, its talons digging into his flesh. He swatted at the bird and it squawked so loudly that Stone was afraid the raiders would come dashing back to finish him off. But there was no other sound.

He opened his eyes and slowly rolled to his side. Waves of nausea rolled up from his stomach, but eventually the sickness passed. He propped himself up and checked the wound on his head. It was sore, but he decided it was not worth being concerned about. He would need to wash the blood away, but for now the wound had clotted and wouldn’t trouble him with more than a headache.

His knee was another story. It was swollen and stiff, tender to the touch and completely unable to bear his weight. He dragged himself to a litter of supplies that had been completely torn apart. The supplies had been transported in a pack that had thin wooden rods to give it structure. He tore the wood free of the canvas and ripped the canvas into strips. Then he placed the rods on either side of his knee. The rods were light and flexible by themselves, but two of them together made them much more stiff. He used the canvas strips to tie the rods to his leg. The added support eased the pain a little and made moving around easier, although he still couldn’t put weight on the leg.

He knew he needed a crutch but he had no idea where he might find one. Trees were rare on the plains and he was miles from the closest settlement. He made a mental list of what he needed to survive. Water, food, a good cloak, and some way to move around. He began to explore around him. Most of the refugees had brought their own food rations, and although most of it had been taken by the raiders, they hadn’t been careful: there was a little food lying on the ground in places. He found a small tow sack and filled it with the remnants of food he found.

There was a stream near the camp, and he went there next. He washed the blood from his head and threw away his ruined shirt; then he scrubbed his body clean. He felt better almost immediately. He drank his fill of the cold water and felt hunger stirring in his stomach. He nibbled some stale bread as he hobbled and hopped back to the ruins of the camp.

There were bodies lying everywhere, many of them covered by carrion birds. He could see the carcasses of several horses and went to inspect them first, checking each body he passed along the way. The bodies were mostly elderly people, both men and women. Stone wondered briefly about the woman who had saved his life. He wondered if she had been taken or slain. He hoped that she had somehow escaped with her life, but he knew that hope was foolish.

He passed by two dead draft horses that he recognized as the animals that had been pulling the wagon. The Norsik weren’t fond of horses, and because he didn’t see the wagons he guessed that either the slaves or the raiders themselves were pulling the wagon. The body of the third horse brought tears to his eyes. It was his mount. He saw that one of the horse’s forelegs was broken, and he knew that Vera had not escaped the raiders. His only hope now was that she was alive, even if she was being held captive. He needed to confirm that she wasn’t one of the bodies lying dead on the field, but at least then he knew what he had to do. He would travel north, following the raiders, through the Wilderlands, through Norsik, even into the Borian Tribelands if he had to. He wouldn’t stop and would never give up until he found her.

Unfortunately his good leg was already aching from bearing all his weight. He needed a horse, but the chances of finding one was were nearly impossible. He had no money and very little supplies. Yet somehow he knew he would find a way to get to Vera.

He spent the rest of the day searching the ruined the camp. The desire to start out north ate at him like an insatiable hunger, but he knew he had to check every body. There were very few Norsik among the dead. He recovered his good knife, the one he had thrown at the raider the night before. He found an old shirt that was wearable, patched and threadbare though it was. He also found a cloak, and just as the sun was setting he found a broken staff that some elderly man had used as a walking stick and perhaps as a weapon. He had tried using one of the curved short swords like a cane, but the blade was too short to be useful. The walking stick, however, was broken at just the right length. It wasn’t as useful as a crutch, but Stone was able to move around much more quickly with it.

When night fell he was exhausted and cold. He knew he needed to rest, and although he knew it was foolish, he built a small fire. Two hours later, he heard horses and a wagon approaching. He got to his feet and moved away from the fire. Then he heard a familiar voice.

“Is it possible that someone survived?” said a man.

“Anything is possible,” said a woman.

Tears filled Stone’s eyes. He hobbled forward and called out.

“Hello,” he said. “It’s me, Stone.”

“What?” said the man. He came walking forward into the firelight. “I can’t believe it. Look here, Mother, it’s our friend Stone.”

It was the farmer and his family, and they came gathering around Stone and his little fire. Stone felt a huge sense of relief wash over him. He had determined to face any obstacle to find Vera, but he had felt so alone near the bodies of so many innocent people.

“You’re hurt,” the farmer’s wife said.

“We were attacked last night,” Stone said. “I have to go after the raiders.”

“How can we help?” the farmer asked.

“I could use a crutch,” Stone said. “And better yet, a horse.”

“We can make you a crutch and you can have our spare horse,” the farmer’s wife said. “It’s the least we can do. We owe you our lives.”

“Do you need help fighting?” the farmer asked, unable to hide the fear in his voice.

“No,” Stone said. “It’s better if I go alone. But your help now means the world to me.”

“We’ll do whatever we can,” the farmer’s wife said.

Her young children and daughters were still in the wagon, but the older sons were leading their horses. They quickly pulled a long plank from the sideboard of the wagon and began fashioning a crutch. They were skilled at making things they needed from whatever was at hand, and in less than half an hour they had fashioned Stone a simple crutch.

Stone and the farmer pulled his saddle off the carcass of his fallen horse. The farmer explained that they had had been moving at night and resting during the day. They’d had better luck keeping watch that way and figured they would have better luck avoiding being seen as well.

“It’s a miracle that you came along when you did,” Stone told them as they gave him more food and supplies. “I’m not sure how far I would have gotten without you.”

“We would have passed right by you if it hadn’t been for the fire,” the farmer said.

“Fate is smiling on us,” Stone said.

“You can say that again.”

“You’d better move on. I’m going to ride for a while myself.”

“You be careful getting on and off that horse,” the farmer’s wife said.

“You sure you don’t need help?” the farmer’s oldest son said.

“I’m sure,” Stone said. “It’s better if you stay with your family. They’ll need you if they run into trouble, and it could be difficult finding each other again once you’re separated.”

“You stay safe,” the farmer said as he climbed back up into the wagon with his wife.

“And you as well, my friends.”

“Come and find us when this is all over and things settle down. You’ll always be welcome in our home.”

“Thank you,” Stone said. “I won’t forget.”

He watched as they rode away into the darkness. He felt a surge of hope as he pulled himself up into the saddle. He looked around for a moment and then he rode north, confident he would find Vera—and a way to save her.