Steel And Flame (Book 1) (39 page)

“Except they won’t see anybody around it and know it’s
a feint.”

Marik considered for a moment before responding. 
“Only the archers are going to be fighting, right?  If you were the rovers and
you suddenly found yourself in a hail of arrows in the dark, would you turn and
fight or run?”

“I’d get the hells out of there,” Kerwin admitted.

“So we won’t need anybody unarmed for archery since
we’re not pursuing.  We can leave the other men around the fire to help the
illusion look real.”

“Maybe that would work.  I notice that would leave you
nice and comfortable and sucking down stew.”

“My skill with the bow is below average at best, you
know that.  I like the idea.  In fact, where’s Fraser?  I’m going to go ask him
about that.”

Marik tracked down his sergeant to present the idea. 
Fraser’s initial objections were the same as Kerwin’s but Marik explained his
reasoning.  Soon the sergeant came to like the idea as much as Marik.  He
reissued orders to the non-archers, then sent Duain around the hill to explain
the change in plan to Bindrift.

As reward for staying behind, Fraser assigned Marik
the duty of finding firewood with the other men who would act as decoys.  In
the end they could only gather dead shrubbery with thick branches at their base
and dried roots.  When they had collected what they could scavenge, a pile
barely adequate for the job rested near the unit’s largest cook pot.

It had been a cloudy day and the night looked to be no
clearer.  Since the clouds concealed the moon, they were both a boon and a
hindrance.  The archers in the Ninth Squad could sneak south without being
seen, but it also  made it difficult to see the rocky point they wanted in the
blackness.

Their anemic fire burned low while the light faded. 
The bowmen were careful about getting too close.  Only six or seven men
gathered around the flames at any given time.  As seen in the last of the
daylight, the camp sprawled with men sitting wherever they felt like. 
Hopefully the rover commander would know they were the mercenaries hired by
Dornory and might then assume that mercs, unhindered by loyalty, felt
uninterested in extending this situation.  They might be making their camp in a
way obvious enough to allow the rovers to flee, thus carrying out their
purchased duties without risking their skins beyond what was necessary.

Fraser issued orders once the darkness completely
swallowed the ambient light.  The archers crept away.  They had spent the wait
binding straps and buckles to keep them silent lest they give away the operation
with a misplaced jingle.

The decoys within the camp kept moving, leaving the
fire only to return after a few minutes.  They wanted to suggest a full company
of restless men were shifting positions.  Away from the fire, cloaks were
removed or donned, packs were worn or left behind, weapons were carried
differently so they appeared as other men when they reentered the light.

A candlemark after full dark, the men lined up at the
pot with their bowls, the line stretching back into the gloom.  The Kings carefully
avoided pressing together in the normal way food lines tended to.  Dietrik
pretended to ladle meager portions of stew from the pot and kept each man
involved in conversation so they stayed longer than usual.  This allowed the
man who had received his portion of imaginary stew to run around the line in
the dark, throw on a cloak or an equally simple disguise, then take a place at
the line’s end.

Once the first man returned to head, Dietrik served
out stew for real.  He maintained the slower pace so as not to tip off any
watchers that mischief was afoot.  Half the men returned to the shadows to eat
their fare while four men, including Marik and Dietrik, remained by the fire. 
Dietrik lidded the pot, then banked the struggling fire to keep the meal warm for
the men who would return later.

With the fire lower, the need to run around the camp
as two different men no longer mattered.  The mercenaries lounged, taking their
ease, waiting in the dark for the battle sounds that would tell them the
night’s activities had fooled the rovers up on their rock.

*        *        *        *        *

Hayden hated the cold; his muscles were cramping and
he felt irritated on top of everything else.  It might be springtime with
warmer days and pleasant breezes, but the nights were still as frozen as Vernilock’s
parlor room.  Not that Hayden ever prayed to that particular god, despite
swearing by him frequently.  All the same, sitting in the dark and the cold and
the wet from the dew and the smell of mole shit thick in his nose seemed far
more in the nature of that particular deity than his own patron God of
Conflict, Ercsilon.

He could see the fire across the open fields.  He
imagined he could also smell the food cooking over it.  The stew might be
comprised solely of dried meat and a handful of shredded vegetables, but right
now it sounded like a king’s high feast.  Besides, the long simmering might
make the meat less leathery.

It was a fine idea of Marik’s, leaving himself back
there in ease with a full belly.  Hayden knew the fresh recruit had never meant
it that way…except it still irritated him.  The conditions were nurturing his
foul mood.

Additionally, he could not pass the time talking with
Edwin or Landon or Kerwin, all of whom had been through many campaigns together
with the Kings, since Fraser had ordered absolute silence.  The sergeant wanted
everyone listening for movement on the rocks.

If they ever came down near this point at all.  While
this might be the most likely escape route, the rovers could come down anywhere
they pleased if they outguessed Fraser.  Or any time for that matter.  Half the
night had passed, with dawn only a few candlemarks away.  The rovers had shown
neither hide nor hair.

Perhaps they had outsmarted Fraser and Bindrift both,
had in fact already sneaked away, leaving the archers guarding an empty rock in
the freezing night.  Wouldn’t that be typical?

He complained to himself about everything and
everybody, forced to sit another candlemark before he finally heard a faint
scrape from the rise.

“Nah, is this finally it?” he whispered and squinted,
straining to see through the darkness.  The moon remained behind the clouds. 
Still, he thought he saw slow movement, a figure stepping onto the fields from
the stone outcrop.

Hayden tapped Kerwin beside him and whispered the signal
Fraser had given them.  Kerwin, better skilled at imitating night sounds,
emitted a soft owl hoot that should not alarm the rovers if they happened to
overhear it.  He repeated the hoot twice, then nocked an arrow to his
bowstring.

The rovers were descending farther north than the
sergeants had hoped, yet looked to be heading south still.  Fraser crept to
their position and took in the situation.

“Stay here,” he whispered to both men.  “I think
they’re going to pass between us and the Second anyway.  Don’t fire until I
give the signal.”

The two acknowledged and he crept back.  He passed the
same message to the other men, then sent Duain scuttling to inform Bindrift. 
Duain would stay with the other unit, they having two fewer archers than the
Fourth so the numbers would even out.

All the men crouched low to the ground while the
solitary man crept south to investigate.  He acted as scout, probably the same
man who had bird-dogged Fraser’s subterfuge earlier.  Staying concealed in the
tall grass only required that they keep motionless.

Every archer had his bow ready.  One quick pull would
send the arrows streaking toward their target.  Fraser held back the signal to
shoot.  Patience usually reaped a larger reward in such situations.  It proved
the wise decision.

The scout reported back to the rovers, then resumed
his walk forward, this time passing the concealed mercenaries, unaware of the
grave mistake he had made.  Once their scout had taken point, the remaining
rovers started to move.  They inched slowly so as to not attract the attention
of the men around the two cook fires.

In the dark, they passed between the two units, closer
to Fraser’s party than Bindrift’s.  Nevertheless, Bindrift gave the first
signal to fire before Fraser had a chance.

There was no hesitation by the rovers.  Already on
edge, they paused only a fraction of an eye blink upon hearing the strange
voice.  They reacted, taking off at a run, proving to be more resourceful than
the sergeants had hoped.

The rovers carried their bows at the ready.  When they
leapt forward, they fired their own volley in the direction of Bindrift’s and
Fraser’s voices before running as fast as they could.  They wasted no time on a
second release.

Rovers fell when arrows cut into their group at an
angle, the units taking care not to fire when the rovers were directly between
them.  Such shooting would result in the two units assaulting each other
instead of the rovers.

The archers launched a second flight before the rovers
disappeared into the dark.  Fraser lit a torch from his tinder box and called
to his men, “Everyone ready a volley and come with me!”

They inspected their kills, holding their bows ready
to fire.  Five men were down, three dead from multiple arrow hits.  Two still
breathed.  Fraser ended their days quickly with his dagger.

Men from the Second joined them to report that two of
their men had taken wounds from the counterattack.  Neither was serious.  One
had taken an arrow through the leg.  He would be off the battle roster for
awhile.

“That’s what you get for jumping too soon,” Kerwin
mentioned to the others.  “If Bindrift had waited a moment, they would have
been further past him.”

“And at a worse angle for return fire,” Landon agreed.

“Let’s get back to the food,” Hayden suggested.  “We
can’t find the arrows that missed in the dark.”

“I’ll go along with that.  We’ll come back tomorrow
morning and gather the rest.”

Fraser held similar thoughts and soon the archers were
heading back to their fire for food as well as what rest they could steal from
the remaining night.

*        *        *        *        *

At first light the archers returned to the ambush
site.  Fraser sent swordsmen up to check the promontory on the off chance that
not every rover had come down.  He’d been fooled before and had learned to
never assume a position was abandoned until verified with your own eyes.

Marik and Dietrik wandered the top of the miniature
escarpment, not expecting to find much and seeing, for once, exactly what they
anticipated.  The odd scuff mark showed where stones had been moved to clear a
spot for a perch or build a makeshift merlon to shoot from behind.  A snapped
length of rawhide lacing left behind, broken feathers and a cracked shaft from
where a rover used the wait to repair damaged arrows.  No rovers remained.

They looked down on the two camps.  Marik thought he
would not mind having to make a defensive stand from this position if the need
arose.  Only a few places could be scaled and the elevated position made it an
attractive place to fend off enemies if your supplies included enough food,
water and arrows.

“Fraser’s saying we’re to shove off soon,” Dietrik
broke into his musings.

“Yeah, I suppose we ought to head back down.  He say
anything else?”

“We’re to go northeast when we leave.  Bindrift and
the Second will head northwest.  Around noon, we’ll change course and both head
north until tomorrow.”

“We’ll end up closer to Dornory’s forces then.”  Marik
frowned.  “That means they’ll have farther to walk.  I thought Landon said one
of their men was hit in the leg.”

“I asked the same thing.  Apparently it only
penetrated a short distance.  They wrapped it up tight and he seems to be able
to walk, though with a limp.”

“Can he walk all day like that?”

“Who knows?  It’s Bindrift’s problem.”

“We’ve already been on the road an eightday since we
left Dornshold.  We could have crawled to the dam by now!”

“The larger the group of men, the slower they go,
especially when most are on foot.  Having to deal with these rover blighters
doesn’t help the situation any either.”

A shout from below told them to hurry the hells up and
finish so they could leave.

“Was that Sloan?  Why is he in such a rush?”

“I take it he’s the type who enjoys the rush of
battle.  He’s the only one who was disappointed about having to stay behind
last night.”

“I didn’t know that.  So long as he doesn’t do
anything stupid to get the rest of us killed,” Marik allowed.

They reached ground when the archers returned from
collecting the arrows littering the ambush sight.  Never one to waste time,
Fraser ordered the men to move out.  The unit traveled along the stone rise and
around the north end heading northeast.  Bindrift’s men still milled around
their campsite, apparently unprepared to depart yet.  No greetings or waves
were exchanged as the Fourth resumed their trek along the dry streambed.