Through the Wildwood (2 page)

“Get it. You’d better be done before the sun gets down, you fargin scum,” the slaver barked. “I’ll lash the skin from your adulterous hide before I waste a drop of lamp oil on your labors.”

“I’m far too valuable for you to lash, you fat, stupid bastard,” Vanx barked, then immediately cursed himself for not holding his tongue.

“CRACK!” the whip snapped across his chest. His roughspun jerkin was laid open, as was his skin. It felt like a red-hot piece of iron was laid there. Amden was rearing back for a second lash when one of the foot travelers, a young girl in a hooded cloak, spoke up.

Vanx had noticed, during the days of stumbling downhill, how she went out of her way to try to conceal her curvy figure with plain, unattractive garb. She never let her hood down for more than a moment. This intrigued him, but his present troubles had been caused by a similar sort of mental meandering, and until now, he’d kept his curiosity at bay.

“Enough,” she said in a mildly commanding tone. What surprised Vanx the most was that Amden obeyed her. The slaver stood seething, his narrowed eyes piercing Vanx, his whip dangling from a grip that clenched and relaxed then clenched again.

“Do your work,” the girl snapped from under the hood. Vanx got his first glimpse of the lower part of her face and recognized her immediately. It was Princess Gallarael, the fiery-hearted daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Highlake.

What is she doing on this trek?
Vanx wondered
. And with such a piss poor lot of guardsmen to protect her. It makes no sense.

He scanned the group of foot travelers as he unstrapped the pickaxe from Amden’s tool bundle. Two hooded men, whom he’d mistaken for monks or priests, were clearly more than what they seemed. It prickled his skin that he hadn’t noticed them before now. The bulge of sword hilts, and the hard lines of leather armor pieces worn under the hooded robes, became more obvious to his keen eyes. Counting Captain Moyle, that was only three capable guards. Not enough for a trip out of the treacherous mountains through wild and unforgiving terrain with a princess.

He pondered all of this while he went off to strike his chains with the pick. He’d have done it sooner, but it was smarter to suffer the whip and travel all the way out of the mountains with the group.

Why is she here?
He kept wondering. If she had business in Andwyn, surely her father would have sent a more formidable escort. He had to know that the three caravan bandits in his dungeon were only the tail-tip of a larger serpent. By the way they bragged about their comrades, Vanx was surprised that this group hadn’t been attacked yet. According to the man who had been locked in the Highlake dungeon cell next to his there were no less than a hundred men hiding out here in the hills, all waiting for a lot of haulers, with guards just like the ones Captain Moyle commanded.

The sound of the pick hitting the chain links was worrisome. It was no easy chore getting through the leg irons. While he tried awkwardly to split his wrist chains, someone grunted and cursed behind him. He froze in terror, expecting Amden’s whip to split his hide, but all he heard was a long sigh. One of the haulers was taking a well-needed piss. Vanx didn’t know a man could piss that long.

Something occurred to Vanx while he waited. Captain Moyle had called this halt far too soon. Another hour of travel would have brought the group down to the outer orchards where the guards patrolled. There was no way the captain would have called the halt if he knew Princess Gallarael was among them. He suddenly understood why Duke Martin sold him to Amden so cheaply. This caravan was going to be ambushed just so he would be murdered.

Vanx whistled. It was all he could do to contain his anxiety as he went about breaking apart the chain between his wrists. The sun was already setting, and neither Gallarael, nor her guards, had any idea what sort of danger they were in.

That white haired witch

in her icy northern hole

is the reason there’s no warmth

in the Bitterland Hold.

– Frosted Soul

C
aptain Moyle looked down the twisting trail and wondered what was taking so long. Duke Martin’s mercenaries were supposed to attack at dusk. He glanced back over his shoulder at the blazing fire in the center of the camp. The smell of the haulers’ stew was savory enough to draw a clan of rock trolls down out of the higher hills. Moyle hoped the duke’s men would arrive soon and kill the slaver and his bunch. He wanted this over.

Who could blame the duke for wanting vengeance?
Moyle thought. He knew he wouldn’t have waited this long to kill a man who bedded his wife. The way the duchess humiliated the duke after being caught, Moyle figured she would soon fall from her window, or choke on a piece of fishbone, if not just disappear altogether.

Moyle patted the dust off of his blue uniform and thought back to the previous night when he had slowed the caravan’s descent long enough for the mercenaries to pass them on a lower trail. He was sure they’d gotten by. Hell, they should be coming up the road at them like a pack of bandits any moment.

Moyle wondered if they were just waiting for full darkness so they wouldn’t be recognized. It wouldn’t do for word of the feigned bandit attack to be linked back to the Duke of Highlake. The duke was already on shaky ground with Parydon royalty. After six years at his post, a safe trade route into, and out of, the mountains hadn’t been established. The Highlake Stronghold was secure. The duke had worked the kingdom’s prisoners to supreme effect while building an imposing wall around the entire Highlake Valley, but the trolls and giants hadn’t been beaten back in any meaningful way.

The giants and trolls foolish enough to venture close to the barrier usually only lived long enough to warn their fellows away from the spear launchers and longbows of the Wall Guard. The duke’s inability… no, Captain Moyle decided, inability was the wrong word. The duke was able, and if given enough slaves and soldiers he could easily secure the passage. It was the duke’s lack of enthusiasm, or maybe his downright lack of respect for King Oakarm’s wishes, that kept the passage from being turned into a prosperous avenue of commerce.

At the moment, the passage was only prosperous for the duke and his cronies. The remote location of the ore-rich valley where the stronghold stood made traversing it next to impossible, and made it more than a little inconvenient for the kingdom to impose its will. Duke Martin exploited this fact, and the orders he was given sometimes left Captain Moyle a little unsettled.

Slowing a typical caravan so that bandits could attack was one thing. The stolen goods always found their way back to Highlake and the bandits who were sometimes captured ended up slaving on the wall. Captain Moyle’s pocket was lined with quality coins. Very few lives were lost and the thieves usually only made away with a small portion of cargo before being beaten back. This fiasco was an entirely different matter. He was about to be party to the outright murder of four slaves, not to mention anyone who got in the way of the slaughter.

Amden would fight fiercely to protect his property, and the lard-assed guards would try to fight as well. Moyle’s head was about to be on the line for the duke. Now the anticipation of the attack had him wishing he had declined to participate. When this was done, he would either become one of Duke Martin’s most trusted men, or a total liability.

Gallarael couldn’t believe her mother had sent her on this horrid journey to buy the pretty slave man back from the marketers in Andwyn. The guards, the slave driver, and even the two skinny slaves had been leering at her the whole way out of the mountains.
What lechers,
she thought. She could understand them ogling if she were dressed in her normal fashion, but in a roughspun smock, with her dirty face under the hood no less, they should not have been attracted to her. At least none of them had badgered her or given her grief. Thankfully, the one-handed whore was keeping them satisfied. Gallarael thought about flipping her hood back and ordering Captain Moyle to take his men back to the stronghold. She would relish the look on his smug face when he realized he was in the company of his liege’s daughter. The sharp remarks he had made over her lagging pace the day before would cause his bowels to ice over. Had he known who she was, he would have offered her his mount and trotted along beside her like some hungry dog.

“Where has your prize gotten off too?” Amden asked Gallarael quietly. “I have not seen him since he returned from digging the shit p… Since he returned from digging the latrine, my lady.”

“Shhhhh,” she hissed. “No ‘my ladies’ out here, fool.” She looked around the camp. The half-moon didn’t go far toward illuminating the space, and the dying fire served only to throw shadows about like skittering spirits. “I don’t see him, either.” She stood. “We wouldn’t even have to be out here in the wild if you had done what my mother asked you to.”

“The orders of a duke outweigh the secret requests of a duchess.” He stood beside her and looked around. “I’m already disobeying your father’s orders by conspiring with you and your mother. It could cost me my freedom.”

“This is my mother’s scheme, slaver.” She spoke from under her hood. “Make no mistake about it.” She had to struggle to keep her voice down. From somewhere at the high side of the camp a long, loud snore sputtered away and then resumed its rhythm.

“If it’s your mother’s dealing, why did you stop me from whipping the cur bastard earlier?”

She said the first thing that came to mind, but she knew that she’d stopped the whip because she didn’t want to see such a beautiful man scarred. “Because it’s cruel.”

“Cruel?” Amden laughed. “Cruel is the way your mother disgraced your father over him. She should have nev—” His words were cut off as an arrow struck him in the head.

It looked to Gallarael as if the shaft had pierced the man’s skull, but Amden cursed and ducked away, grabbing at it. Gallarael screamed, bringing her two personal guards out of their slumber and to the ready. In a pair of heartbeats she was pinned beneath one of them while the other took up a defensive position over them and called out into the night.

“Cease your attack!” he yelled. “Do you dare bring harm upon Princess Gallarael, the daughter of the Duke of Highlake? The king’s own—” The man stumbled back and tumbled over Gallarael and whoever was holding her down. An arrow was sticking out of his chest. Frothy bubbles of blood hissed and sputtered as he inhaled.

Captain Moyle heard the man’s proclamation and recognized the voice as that of Sterven Trent, the head of the duchess’s personal guard attachment. He knew he was in a serious mess now. Sterven’s presence only proved that Princess Gallarael was among them. The girl had to be protected at all costs. It wouldn’t matter to Duke Martin if every member of the caravan was killed as long as Gallarael was spared. He realized, as an arrow sped past his ear, humming like an angry hornet, that the attack on them was coming from everywhere, not just near where the slaves were encamped. Moyle suddenly feared that the duke hadn’t intended for any of them to survive, not even him. Still, the urge to protect the princess overrode his instinctual desire to flee and survive. He started toward the campfire where he had last seen the robed woman he now knew was the princess. The grunts and yells of men being murdered in their half-sleep filled the night. Ahead of him, Amden Gore was on his knees with an arrow protruding out of his temple. The man’s face and shoulder were covered in blood. One of the travelers lay twitching in a sprawl nearby as his life’s blood pulsed out.