Steel And Flame (Book 1) (44 page)

The regular archers strung their bows with uncanny
speed.  Others picked up the fallen arms of their enemies.  While this
occurred, Marik found Fraser talking to Earnell and quickly explained that a
force of men were probably climbing the tower, that they might pour through
that trap door any moment.

Earnell shouted clipped orders.  Swordsmen threw open
the hatch to reveal a room filling the tower’s width.  It lacked any interior
walls.  A ladder had been removed, forcing the attackers to jump the distance
to the floor.  Soon Marik stood inside the tower, listening to rolling
footsteps climbing upward.  As he had imagined, the room held a large wheel
with many grips jutting from it set on one wall.  Thick rope connecting it to
the sluice gate angled through a square hole in the wall.

Across the room, a second trap door burst open.  Men
swarmed through, swords drawn.  Marik used the newest form of his combination
attack to engage a man who proved much better than any he had faced so far. 
His foe blocked all Marik’s strikes before unleashing his own series that Marik
found difficult to fend off.  The assault forced him back, bare steps from the
south wall, before he turned aside the blade and renewed his attack.

The man was very good indeed, and must be one of the
shining stars in Fielo’s forces.  For the first time on this contract, Marik
felt unsure of the fight’s outcome.  He would never find out who was better
though, because Sloan suddenly appeared at the man’s back.  With astonishing
ease, he thrust through the man’s centerline from behind, splitting the mail
with his strange sword.

Sloan waited for no words of thanks.  He put a boot to
the man’s back, yanked his sword free from the gurgling corpse, then jumped
through the open trap.  Marik collected himself before following.  The hollow
space below had been constructed as a catwalk of stairs spiraling down the
walls in a square corkscrew.  No wonder Fielo’s men were able to swarm into the
upper room so quickly.  The stairs led straight to the trap door.

Fighting raged below.  By the time Marik reached it,
it was over.  Sloan had defeated most of the men, with Talbot and Duain
cleaning up the remains.  They reached the bottom, then waited for the rest of
the group.  Two men discovered the ladder for the roof trap and carried it back
up.  Once everyone assembled, Sloan opened the door onto the dam wall.

The wall was ten feet wide.  Most of the defenders had
retreated to the far side under the raining arrows.  The Kings advanced fifteen
feet before Earnell shouted from above, telling them to hold their position. 
Beside him stood Dornory, who had caught up and resumed command now that the
fighting had mostly ended.  Across the dam, the last defender slipped inside
the west tower and slammed the door behind.

And so the fighting ended with the two sides staring
at each other across the dam.  Dornory sent his men down to take charge of the
tower interior with Balfourth in the lead.  Marik passed him on the stairs and
saw the young noble shaking his boot with a disgusted expression twisting his
face since he had stepped in a puddle of blood.

*        *        *        *        *

“There he goes,” Hayden said from the canyon edge.  “I
was wondering how long that would take.”

Across the canyon, a small group could be seen riding
away to the west.  At the head on a magnificent midnight-black mount rode a man
who could only be Fielo himself.

“Dornory’s just going to let him go?”  Marik could
scarcely believe it.

“Of course.  If we killed him, it’d cause all kinds of
uproar and the king would need to get himself involved to demonstrate his
leadership.  That’s why you should never kill a noble if you have a choice.”

“How stupid!”

“Better to capture him and ransom him back to his
family.  It’s the best way to make coin as a merc.”

“Where’s he going?”

“Back home to his roost probably, or off to lodge a
petition with the king against Dornory.”

They watched the group ride further away.

“What surprises me,” Marik stated, “is the fact that
the tower was empty when we stormed it.  Why didn’t Fielo fill it with his
men?  We would have had a lot more trouble taking it.”

Hayden answered, “It’s a bad idea to let enemies over
your head.  Our goal is to destroy this dam, right?  If he had packed it full,
we could have poured oil down the trap and burned up all his men along with
it.”

“But he risked that anyway, sending his men up.”

“Not really.  Once he saw we weren’t planning on
torching the tower, he knew it was safe to send in his men.  Or safe from that
anyway.”

“So that’s it for us then?  The contract’s over?”

“For the most part.  Earnell will collect the rest of
the fees for the Kings and if we can buy or steal a wagon, we’ll collect a
bunch of those swords still laying around from the night fight for the armory. 
Then we’ll be on our way.  We’ll probably have to wait around for Dornory to
finish off the dam, but that’s all.”

“How’s he going to do that?  I wouldn’t want to be in
front of it with an axe, chopping holes with that lake on the other side.”

“Nah, nothing like that.  Just you watch.  Dornory’s
pet alchemist will go to work on it.”

“What?  I didn’t know an alchemist was here.”

Hayden looked surprised.  “You never saw his wagon? 
It’s the one with all the yellow tarps and the ‘Keep Away’ signs.”

“I can’t read, remember?”

“Oh yeah, I always forget that.  Anyway, let’s come up
here tomorrow for the show.  I don’t think they’ll do it today.”

Marik spent the evening tending to his minor wounds
and working on his equipment so Sennet would have no cause to yell at him when
he returned.  The next day, he waited on the canyon edge with Hayden and the
others.

Below, a man in a hooded yellow overcoat gave
directions to several guardsmen.  Under his instruction they had built several
rock piles against dam’s base.  The piles were actually a covering over several
small casks and burlap bags the alchemist unloaded from his wagon.  Constant
shouts from him not to get the bags wet in the water bubbling up from under the
sluice gate drifted to the men lining the canyon’s rim.  He stuffed empty grain
sacks into openings through the tops of each pile, then poured liquid over the
coarse materiel from a different cask.

Once everything was set to his satisfaction, the men
returned to the top.  He informed Dornory that they could begin.

At his signal, five archers on each side lit their
fire arrows and simultaneously fired them at the sacks.  Several missed, but
others landed on the bags.  The burlap caught fire rapidly, blazing within
moments.

Suddenly, in a flash of fire and a thundering crash
that Marik thought would stop his heart, the right side of the dam exploded. 
Fiery fragments whistled through the air, many fluttering while others streaked
like arrows.  When the smoke drift away on the slight breeze, he could see the
outer log wall had mostly been destroyed.  The earth and stone fill crumbled
outward, unsupported by the shattered wall.  A second explosion rocked the
ground, decimating the left side.

The debris interiors collapsed into mounds, yet the
second log wall, the one holding back the water, remained intact.

“Now what,” asked Marik, speaking louder to hear
himself over the ringing in his ears.  “Do they do that again?”

“No, look!”

The weight of the water slowly bent the second wall
forward.  While Marik watched, the entire eastern side gradually toppled until
water flowed over in a waterfall.  Newly freed water poured over, quickly
washing away the loose earth mounds.  After several moments the west side
collapsed with a crash when the dirt pile dissolved, taking the gate with it.

Marik looked downstream.  He hoped no one miles away
had walked to the middle of the bed to fill a bucket with precious water.  They
would likely be swept away!

“That black powder’s some powerful stuff,” Hayden commented
in admiration.

“The towers are still there.”

“That’s Dornory’s and Fielo’s problem.  They can work
it out themselves.  Let’s get going.  The sooner we leave, the sooner we get
home.”

The injured slowed the Ninth, delaying their arrival
home until an eightday before true summer.  Lieutenant Earnell reported to
Commander Torrance upon their arrival.  This time of year, the Kings were never
short of work.  Earnell received their next assignments along with a three day
rest period.  Everyone drew their pay for the eightdays they had been gone. 
Most opted to spend their rest period in a tavern on Ale House Row.

As soon as Marik learned their next contract’s
location, he dragged Dietrik to the records office to help him study the
various maps of the area.

“You really should learn to read.  Do you want to rely
on other people like this forever?”

Marik scowled.  “Half the men in the Ninth can’t
read.  Why should I bother?  People like you and Landon and Hayden are the
exception, not the rule.  Now, where are we going?”

Dietrik shrugged, then reached up high to tap the
large map of Galemar hanging on the wall.  “Right here, I believe.”

“That’s right on the border with Perrisan.  Why don’t
the guardsmen handle it?”

“Didn’t you hear Fraser?”

“No, I was still half asleep when he came in.”

“They’ve already tried, but the rogues cross over the
border long enough to raid a town and then they hop back across.  The guardsmen
are all affiliated with the crown so if they cross the border uninvited, it
would get taken the wrong way.”

“Everyone knows they’d only be after the bandits!”

“There’s a certain protocol involved.  You don’t want
to offend your neighbors, especially if they happen to be irritable ones.”

“But we can?”

“We’re not affiliated with the king personally. 
That’s why the Crimson Kings can take contracts from outside the borders. 
Well, two of the borders anyway.  I understand Torrance is not particularly
enamoured of Nolier at the moment.”

“Nolier.”  Marik said this thoughtfully.  “That’s right,
their king died and the son took the crown.”

“Most people preferred the father, if you listen to
the talk.”

“After Dornory and the mighty Balfourth, I have no
trouble believing that.”  Marik turned back to the maps.  “So the bandits are
along here?”

“These are all the villages that have been raided to
date,” Dietrik answered, running his finger along the eastern end of the border
between Galemar and its northern neighbor.  “Right along here, and as far
southeast as the Cliffsdains when they grow daring.  I do not believe they have
gone further west than the eastern quarter.  The best guess is that the group
has a home base within these fifty miles.  I wonder how all these little
villages came up with the contract fee?”

“Where’s Spirratta,” Marik asked suddenly.

“Uh, wait a moment…right here,” Dietrik said, moving
his finger across three-fourths of the kingdom.  It lay considerably south and
west of the area they would travel to.

“Well, this is as good a time as any then,” Marik
muttered to himself.

“For what?”

“My father.  All the information I have is from a King
my father traveled with before he vanished.  He left in Spirratta, heading
north without saying why.”

“If he made it all the way to the border, you might
find information there.  But after so many years, most likely no one will
remember anything at all.”

“I have to try, Dietrik.”  A longing glaze filmed his
eyes.  “I was going to ask Sennet about him since he seems to know a little
about everyone in the band at any given time, but he left with his weapons
caravan for Thoenar before we got back.  Maybe I’ve found a place here with the
Kings, but I still need to know what happened to him.”

“I didn’t mean you should give up,” Dietrik hastily
assured, feeling guilty.

Marik bowed his head.  “Yeah, I know.”  He perked up
after a moment, adding,  “Besides, I can ask along the way when we stop.”

“Not to put a damper on it again, but we usually camp
outside of the towns, mate.”

Smug knowledge replaced the lingering poignancy.  “Not
this time!  I guess you weren’t so awake yourself since you missed that part!”

“What might that be?”

“Since it’s so far off and it’s only the Third and
Fourth Units and the spring is already over—“

“Not quite.”

“Right, not quite, the band’s letting us take mounts
out of the corral.  We have to stop over in towns to replenish the feed for the
horses and the like, so I can ask my questions then.”

“Oh, that’ll be nice.  It will still take at least
three eightdays.”  He suddenly weighed Marik with his eyes.  “Have you ever
ridden a horse before?”

“No, but I’ve looked after several, from the caravans
coming into Tattersfield.”

“Perhaps you should practice for the next day or so.”

“Maybe.  We can see the stable master later.  Let’s
finish with these maps.”

*        *        *        *        *

They set out two days later, having claimed mounts
from the Kings’ corral.  A fenced area forming a long, wide corridor ran from a
gate in the eastern wall down the hill.  This side was less steep, with firmer
ground than the trial hillside to the north where Marik and Dietrik had first
met.  At the hill’s base the ground continued descending, forming a sunken,
enclosed valley.  The valley sides were far too steep for a horse to climb so
it needed no fences beyond the corridor.  Once in the valley, the only way out
lay up the fenced slope to Kingshome.

The vale contained enough space for the horses to
run.  It could support all the horses needed by the band since the vale could
have contained Kingshome itself ten times over.  At the eastern end, a large
pond bordered by trees and berry bushes provided water, and the valley
supported an abundance of delicious grasses.  In addition to the grazing, the
grooms scattered feed across a corner every day.

It seemed odd to Marik that he’d spent an entire
season living in the town, yet had never once come down to the horses’ vale.

He chose a dark bay mare, the black of her mane and
tail contrasting with her mahogany coat.  She appeared to like him and gave him
little trouble.  Her only flaw appeared to be a desire to wander after anything
that caught her attention.  Marik considered naming her, but she did not belong
to him and he would only have the use of her for a half-season.

He rode beside Dietrik’s brown roan, the white hairs
sprinkled throughout her coat making her look a grandmother rather than a
war-horse in her prime.

The first days Marik spent adjusting to the peculiar
sores and bruises the saddle gave him.  Only after they had been on the road a
good while did he begin making inquiries in travel shops and from suppliers in
the towns they stopped at.  As he expected, none bore any interest in his
story.  Still, the shopkeepers willing to deal with mercenaries usually stopped
a moment to think back.  Invariably, they apologized and gave him nothing.

He persisted in the face of futility.  The odds of
finding any clues were against him, he knew, especially during his first
attempts.  Marik would continue nonetheless.  This greatly relieved Dietrik,
who had anticipated a depression descending on his friend.

For fifteen days Marik asked questions.  His journey
for answers had ground to a dead halt over two seasons ago.  Though he had
little chance of learning anything except by pure luck, making his inquiries
felt good.  The shift months back from an active search effort to a free
wanderer had been the only apparent alternative at the time.  He had hated the
change but acknowledged the truth.  Working toward his goal again lifted his
spirits, despite the lack of progress toward the final answer.

After Dietrik’s predicted three eightdays, they
arrived at the village of Dollet where they found a warmer greeting than Marik
had become accustomed to.

It was a small village.  The population could not have
exceeded two-hundred.  Their mayor, if the head man of such a small gathering
could be called by that title, rushed out to great them the instant they
stopped in the village square.

A little man, and a very anxious one, he spent the
entire time he talked washing one hand with the other despite the fact neither
soap nor water were present.  He bobbed up and down like a floater on a fishing
line in which the fish have taken an interest.

“Oh, thank goodness!  You are the men we asked for,
aren’t you?  Aren’t you?  I
do
hope so!”

Fraser climbed down from his mount.  “We’ve been
dispatched by the Crimson Kings to deal with a raider problem in this area.”

“Oh good, so good,” the little man exclaimed.  “We’ve
been ever so worried you see.  Another village a few miles away was attacked
only a few days ago and we’ve been ever so worried.  We’re
so
glad
you’re finally here, so glad!”

“Amazing,” muttered Marik to his friend.  “Someone
actually glad to see
us
?”

The little man continued.  “This has become such a
problem, what with never knowing if we’re safe or who’s going to be next. 
They’ve taken several women you know, dreadful, it’s so dreadful.  We’ve been
gathering whatever we can use for defense, but we’re so glad that you’re here
now, so glad indeed!”

“Tell me everything that’s been happening lately,”
Fraser commanded the little man in a gentler tone than his men had ever heard
him use.

“Yes, of course.  Of course!  Please, do come this
way, you must be tired!  Would you like a drink?  Yes of course, please come
and I’ll tell you everything I can while you have your drink.  Oh, Maurice! 
Please help the rest of these good men will you?  You can, uh…”

He seemed at a loss for a moment before rallying, “The
long house will do!   We haven’t been able to fill it what with all this going
on.  There should be enough room in there.  Yes, that should do nicely.”

With that, the little man whisked away the sergeant
while Maurice led them to the village’s center.  He proved a good deal quieter
than the first man, mumbling the necessities to Sergeant Giles, offering only
the bare facts.

They found themselves in a supply warehouse that
noticeably lacked supplies.  Marik leaned against a half-empty grain sack to
comment, “It must be a sad bunch of bandits if they’re stooping to raid places
like this.”

Hayden replied from his place over by a support post,
“Yeah, most likely, but I’ve learned never to take anything for granted on the
borders.”

“Why is that?”

“Strange things happen from time to time, and usually
when they do, it’s when you’re near the border.”

“Is that a superstition?”

“No my boy, it’s personal experience.”

*        *        *        *        *

Hayden’s words might have been prophetic, had he been
a follower of that particular sect, which he was not.  Like most in the Kings,
when he felt the need to pray he offered his words to Ercsilon, a god with
dominion over conflict, rather than the Goddess Fate.

Still, as the summer progressed, Marik suspected
Hayden of a secret change in faith.  A simple band of highwaymen given to
raiding small villages should never be giving them this much trouble.

To begin with, they could never corner the bastards. 
No matter what clever plan Fraser and Giles cooked up, it never proceeded the
way they intended and their targets always escaped.  Matters were made worse
when following solid information on the bandits at times led them away rather
than closer.  Twice they had been miles off when the raiders descended on a
different village than expected.

This led to arguments among the men.  Tensions ran
high.  Marik was as frustrated as everyone else, but he had his inquiries to
help distract him.  At each minor village they passed through, he questioned
everyone willing to speak with him.  He found many opportunities to speak with
every village member since the long chase frequently brought them through the
same settlements four or five times.  The buoyant joy of working toward his
goal quickly lost its uplift when the inevitable negatives relentlessly matched
their failure to catch the bandits.

Then, after several eightdays of fruitless effort, the
Kings finally caught a raider while the other bandits slipped through the
mercenaries’ fingers like sand.  It might never have happened had Kerwin not
been taunting Edwin about his so called capabilities with the bow, seeing as
they had yet to bring any rogues down.

Already frustrated to the point of fighting even
fellow unit members, Edwin had vowed the next time they found the bandits he
would shoot at least one of the slippery, gods-cursed, thieving eels.  Kerwin
started a betting pool against this likelihood that soon involved everyone. 
This so incensed the archer that he managed an impossible shot from a range he
should have been unable to reach.  The mercenaries apprehended the bandit, who
promised to talk if they would pull the arrow out of his leg and treat the
wound.  Edwin walked with a wide smirk while Kerwin paid out the long shot
winnings, not smirking in the least.