Brotherband 3: The Hunters (5 page)

A
ll thoughts of fatigue left Hal as he pounded across the clearing, shouting to alert the others. Thorn was the first to react, erupting from the small tent and following the young skirl to where the blanket and chain lay discarded beside the pine tree.

Ulf was on sentry duty and he was the next to arrive. His axe was thrust through a loop on his belt and it banged awkwardly against his hip as he ran from the beach to join them. Lydia wasn’t far behind him.

‘He must have had a knife hidden somewhere,’ Hal said bitterly. He looked up at Thorn, who was scanning the trees, looking for some sign of the missing prisoner. ‘Did anyone bother to search him?’

Thorn met his gaze and shook his head. ‘I took him out of the town jail, remember? It didn’t occur to me that he might be armed. I assumed they would have searched him.’

There was no note of apology in his voice. Perhaps he had made a mistake, but it was an understandable one. And there was no sense in beating his breast about it now. Rikard had been carrying a knife. He had cut through his bonds. And now he was gone. Instead of bemoaning the fact, Thorn was determined to get him back.

‘Where do you think he’s got to?’ Ulf said. He started towards the treeline but a curt order from Lydia stopped him before he had gone two paces.

‘Don’t go there!’ she snapped. When he looked at her, eyebrows raised, she continued in a more conciliatory tone. ‘Sorry, Ulf. I had to stop you before you went blundering in there. I don’t want you covering up any tracks he may have left.’

‘I don’t blunder, I’ll have you know,’ Ulf said, with some dignity. ‘I’m a very light treader.’

‘I stand corrected,’ Lydia said. ‘In that case, don’t go treading lightly in there, if you don’t mind.’

Honour satisfied, Ulf nodded agreement. ‘Well, if you put it that way . . .’

Stig, Jesper and Edvin had joined them by this stage.

‘What’s happened?’ Jesper asked. The answer was obvious. But it was a perfectly natural reaction, Hal thought.

‘Rikard escaped during the night,’ Lydia told him. Jesper drew breath for another question but Thorn forestalled him.

‘He had a knife. He cut through the leather cuffs.’

‘That would have taken a while,’ Stig said. ‘Those cuffs were boiled, toughened leather – they were nearly as hard as wood.’

‘He had all night to do it,’ Hal told him. He knelt down and picked up the cuffs, examining them. One had been severed in a series of short, jagged cuts. The other was cut in a much cleaner, straighter line.

‘He must have done this one first,’ he said, pointing to the ragged edge. ‘It would have been more awkward with his hands fastened. He wouldn’t have been able to get a comfortable position or much purchase.’ He mimed the awkward movements of a man with his hands bound together, trying to work on an imaginary cuff. ‘He must have been at it for hours.’

‘He was still here when you relieved me, Hal,’ Lydia said thoughtfully. ‘I remember noticing him just before I waved to Jesper.’ She turned to the former thief. ‘Do you remember seeing him when you went off watch?’ she asked.

Jesper frowned, thinking. ‘I’m pretty sure I did,’ he said. ‘Yes. He was here then, I’m sure of it.’

Then he hesitated. ‘At least, I think so. Maybe he was still here then.’ He frowned. ‘I’m not sure. I wasn’t really looking for him.’

‘Does it matter?’ Ulf put in and Lydia looked quickly at him.

‘If we know when he got away, it’ll give us an idea of how far he might have gone,’ she said and he nodded, appreciating the point.

Stig was about to say something when they were distracted by a feeble cry from the small tent. Edvin looked around the group gathered by the discarded chains. Only Stefan and Wulf were absent and they were notoriously heavy sleepers.

‘Is anyone with Ingvar?’ he asked and they all exchanged guilty looks. In the confusion following the discovery that Rikard had escaped, they had all forgotten their wounded friend.

‘Sorry, Edvin . . .’ Hal began, but Edvin was already running towards the tent.

‘It’s all right. It’s my job, after all,’ he called back to them. There was an awkward pause, then Thorn called their attention back to the matter at hand.

‘All right, so we can assume he was here until at least an hour after midnight. Then Stig took over from Jesper. My guess is that he would wait another hour for Stig to get tired and bored.’

Stig drew himself upright. ‘I don’t get tired and bored when I’m on sentry-go,’ he protested.

Thorn met his gaze unwaveringly. ‘
Everybody
gets tired and bored on sentry-go.’

Stig subsided. ‘Yeah. I guess so. Maybe I got a little tired – and even a little bored.’

Thorn glanced at the eastern horizon, gauging the time. There was a grey light flooding the sky but the sun was yet to appear.

‘So let’s say he has a four-hour start on us,’ he said.

‘On us?’ Hal said.

Thorn shrugged. ‘On me, then,’ he said, correcting himself. ‘I’m going after him.’

‘And just where are you planning to look?’ Lydia asked him. He paused, then raised an eyebrow at her.

‘Well, I rather thought I’d start in the forest,’ he said.

She looked at the trees, then back at him. ‘It’s a big forest. Which direction were you planning on looking? Bear in mind, he could have gone any way but north.’

The sea lay to the north. It was the one direction Rikard could not have taken.

‘Do you know how to track?’ she continued. ‘How to look for signs and follow them?’

Thorn hesitated. He had spoken in the heat of the moment. He was quietly furious with Rikard. He didn’t like to be bested by anyone and he counted the pirate as a very low-life specimen indeed. He realised now that Lydia was right. But, being Thorn, he didn’t want to admit it straight away.

‘I figure he’ll be heading for Pragha. That’s east of here. That’s where I was planning on heading.’

‘That’s if he’s silly enough to head there straight away,’ Lydia countered. ‘After all, he knows you know he wants to go there. He’d be a fool if he just went straight in that direction.’

‘He is a fool,’ Thorn said angrily, then wished he hadn’t.

‘He was smart enough to keep his knife hidden. And smart enough to get away.’

‘What are you getting at, Lydia?’ Hal put in. ‘We’re wasting time here.’

She looked at him and nodded. ‘Exactly. We’re wasting time. And we’ll waste more if we go tramping aimlessly about the forest looking for him. I’m suggesting that I go after him. I can track him. That’s what I do, after all. You can come with me, Thorn,’ she added and he performed an exaggerated bow in her direction.

‘Oh, well, thank you very much. Tell me, why didn’t you just come out and say that in the first place?’

‘Because I know what you would have said.
No. I work better alone. This is no job for a girl. I’ll be looking for Rikard with one eye and looking after you with the other one.
That sort of claptrap. Am I right?’

Thorn instinctively went to deny it, but then stopped and grinned, a little sheepishly.

‘Pretty much,’ he admitted. ‘All right. You’ve made your point. Let’s get our things together and go after him.’

‘Is it really necessary, Thorn?’ Hal said. ‘He’s told us where Zavac is headed.’

The old sea wolf nodded fiercely. ‘Yes, it is. He may have lied to us. Once we know the
Raven
is really heading down the Dan, I’ll happily let him go. I’ll help him over the side with my boot, in fact. But until we’re sure, we may still need him.’

Hal nodded, satisfied. ‘That makes sense. You’d better get going then.’

‘I’m coming too,’ Stig said, but Lydia shook her head.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Three of us will make more noise. It’ll be bad enough having Thorn blundering along with me . . .’

‘You know, any more of these compliments and my head won’t fit in my helmet,’ Thorn said mildly.

She glanced at him, unsmiling. In truth, she knew Thorn could move in almost total silence. She’d seen him do so on more than one occasion. But Stig didn’t have the same skill and she’d said it to spare his feelings.

Stig opened his mouth to object but Hal forestalled him. ‘She’s right. Lydia and Thorn will be more than a match for Rikard. You’ll stay here, Stig.’

Stig flushed, about to make an angry rejoinder. Then he took several deep breaths and forced his anger down.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘If you say so.’

Interesting, Thorn thought to himself. There was a time, not too long ago, when Stig would have argued and bickered about Hal’s order. They’re all growing up, Thorn thought, and faster than I can keep up with.

Lydia nodded her gratitude to Hal. As the group broke up and headed back across the clearing to the camp site, she contrived to get beside Stig. She touched his arm and he turned to her, so that they fell behind the others.

‘I didn’t want to say it in front of him,’ she said softly. ‘But Hal’s going to need you here – in case things don’t go so well with Ingvar.’

She saw understanding dawn in his eyes. ‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ he said. He patted her on the shoulder. ‘Good luck. Make sure you bring that snake in the grass back with you.’

She smiled. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll find him. Thorn will bring him back.’

I
t took less than five minutes for Thorn and Lydia to make themselves ready. They took a blanket each. Thorn rolled his in a small tarpaulin that would serve as a tent if the weather turned, then filled a water skin and slung it over his shoulder. Lydia strapped on her heavy leather belt, with the dirk and atlatl hanging from it, quickly checked the darts in her quiver, then passed the strap over her head. The atlatl was a throwing stick with a hooked end that she used to impart extra power to the darts when she threw them.

While they were making their preparations, Stig went to the provisions sack by the cook fire and put together a package of dried meat and fruit and two small loaves of bread that had been baked the day before. He passed it to Thorn.

‘Ready?’ the old sea wolf said to Lydia, who nodded. ‘Then let’s get going.’

‘Aren’t you taking your club-hand?’ Hal asked. He’d noticed that the heavy studded club was lying with the small pile of Thorn’s possessions inside the tent.

‘For Rikard?’ Thorn said. ‘I don’t need it. I’ve got my saxe.’ He patted the leather hilt of the heavy knife that hung from his belt.

Hal nodded. Now that he thought about it, Thorn wouldn’t need the heavy war club to deal with Rikard and it would simply have been more weight to carry.

‘Are we going to stand here talking all day?’ Lydia asked. ‘It’ll be noon before we get away at this rate.’

Which was hardly fair, as the sun had only just slipped above the eastern horizon. Thorn raised his eyebrows to Hal in an exaggerated manner, then bowed and, with a sweeping movement of his arm, gestured for her to precede him.

‘Your pardon, lady. Please lead the way and I will follow.’

She sniffed disdainfully as she strode across the clearing to the treeline, Thorn on her heels. ‘Try not to put your big sailor’s feet all over the tracks.’

Thorn grinned at Hal. ‘It’s going to be a long couple of days.’

Lydia ignored him. Hal signalled for the others to stop before they reached the spot where Rikard had been bound. They chorused their goodbyes and wishes of good luck. Lydia glanced back at Hal.

‘Take care of Ingvar,’ she said. Then she turned away. She stopped at the pine tree, casting around the ground close by. At this point, the sand of the beach was interspersed with a scrappy cover of coarse grass. But there was still enough soft sand to hold a heel print from Rikard’s boot. A few metres further on, she found another, then a third. They led directly into the tree cover.

‘So far so good,’ she said to herself. Then she added over her shoulder, ‘Stay behind me, Thorn.’

Thorn was tempted to make a pithy reply, but realised her instruction made sense. He said nothing and moved quietly in her footsteps. Inside the trees, the low-lying early sun created a confusing pattern of bright glare and dark shade. The contrast between the dazzling light and the shadows made it difficult for the eye to focus. But Lydia moved confidently. Before long, a patch of damp soil showed another heel print.

‘He would have done better to get rid of those boots,’ she said. Rikard had been wearing high leather sea boots, with hard soles and heels. They looked quite dashing, and they were sensible enough on board ship, where waves would wash over the deck. But they were far less practical when the wearer was running through the tangled undergrowth, vines and roots that littered a forest floor. She pointed to a small indentation in the thick leaf mould that covered the ground.

‘He fell over here,’ she said.

Thorn bent to peer at the mark. ‘How can you tell?’ he asked. He was amazed that she had noticed the small indentation.

‘That was made by the palm of his hand when he threw it out to save himself,’ she told him in a matter-of-fact tone. She glanced round to where several tree roots protruded from the ground a couple of metres before the hand mark.

‘Probably tripped on one of them. You might even see the scuff mark from his boot if you look.’