Demontech: Gulf Run (25 page)

Lyft gave him the kind of look a junior man gives an officer who asks a question so dumb it doesn’t deserve an answer and said, “Of course, Lord Haft. We searched from the road to five hundred yards away from it, and found no one, nor did we find sign of anyone other than those who we already knew had been there.”

Haft nodded. He was sure the two men had done exactly as they said. He was also sure they weren’t as skilled at spotting sign as the Border Warders and Borderers were. He was almost sorry he’d used the Royal Lancers for the point squad. But the Royal Lancers were stronger fighters than the others, and the point squad was more likely to have to fight than the border soldiers with whom he’d run the reconnaissance before they turned onto this eastbound road.

A passage from
Lord Gunny Says
came to him.
You never have exactly the men or weapons you need in exactly the balance you need. Neither does the enemy. That’s why we train in as many different ways as we do: So that when we need someone or something that we don’t have, we can do a better job of covering the lack than our enemy can. Our superior ability to substitute who and what we do have for what we don’t have is a major part of why we win all of our battles.

Well, Haft didn’t think he and Spinner had done the best possible job of substituting in this case. He looked to the south. There were Border Warders there. Some of them probably accompanied the man Guma had sent to alert them when he returned. They could search the area for sign of more.

“Go back and keep an eye on them,” he told Lyft and Naedre, “while we decide what to do.”

He watched where they ran as the two loped back to their observation post and shook his head. He knew the only reason he could see the sign they left was that he’d seen them lay it. But he was confident the Border Warders would see it when they came. He climbed onto his mare and trotted back to the point squad.

CHAPTER

FOURTEEN

Birdwhistle and Tracker were two of the original Zobran Border Warders to join the band, long weeks before it grew large enough to become a refugee caravan. Like most of the Border Warders, they’d both been poachers before accepting the prince’s pardon in exchange for putting their skills to the warding of Zobra’s borders. Like their brethren in mottled green surcoats, they were highly adept at stealthy movement in forest and glen, though more so in forest than glen. Their tracking abilities, of both game and man, were superlative—if they didn’t see a sign of man or beast, that sign probably didn’t exist. And they were excellent marksmen with their bows—longbow for both, now that Birdwhistle had demonstrated its value in combat to Tracker, who had previously used the short bow.

The land they traversed between the north shore of the Princedon Gulf and the road the caravan followed was different from the forests and glens of Zobra that were so familiar to them. The forest had fewer trees, and those were nearly all bumber trees whose mushroom-cap branches cast little shadow and fan trees that light filtered through. In short, more light reached the ground, which left fewer shadows for them to move through unseen. The very ground was different. In the forests of Zobra they had spent their lives moving through, the ground was soft underfoot, covered with centuries of fallen leafs and twigs, mulch that returned life to earth to make fresh life. Here, the decaying cover was thin and spotty, the dirt was coarser, almost sandy, filled with pebbles, and stippled with stone. The hardness of the ground, and its pebbles and stones, didn’t take sign as well as the forests of Zobra.

Still, they could see sign. Here, a deer had passed, nibbling on the leafs of low branches. There, a boar had rooted for succulents hidden beneath rocks. They exchanged a glance and a grin when they spotted pug of cat—they knew Haft was afraid of big cats. And they found they could move unseen even with the lack of shadows; had they not been unwilling to ease their watch for Jokapcul or other threats, they could easily have taken that deer when they passed unnoticed within thirty feet of it.

It wasn’t until they found improperly buried scat and dirtied leafs that they found sign of man. They cast around in overlapping spirals, looking for more sign, before Birdwhistle found a carelessly tripped rock. Flat and as big as a man’s palm, it had been moved from its earlier resting place, exposing the lichen that grew on the pebbles on which it had sat. They followed a line from the incompletely buried scat through the disturbed rock, and twenty paces farther found a glob of sputum spattered on some pebbles. Two paces farther still, they came across an almost imperceptible indentation in a stretch of coarse dirt; though it didn’t show clear shape, they knew it was a human footprint. On closer examination they found the rounded end went toward the scat, the broader end to the east—the direction they’d followed the other signs to reach the footprint. It was hard to tell in the sandy soil, but they were certain it was recent. The sign they’d seen gave no evidence of who left it, but they doubted it was an innocent fisherman or local hunter. They nocked arrows and continued.

Birdwhistle kept his eyes up, watching for men; Tracker bent his neck, searching the ground for sign. They cast from side to side as they went—and both listened intently for sounds not made by wind or animal.

They didn’t pay particular attention to the smells that wafted on the sea breeze from the Gulf, since the salt tang in the air would interfere with anything they might smell at a distance, though scents came to them before sounds or visual signs. But ignoring that smell was almost a mistake. They dismissed the unpleasant odor of rotting fish until they smelled it mixed with burned wood. Then they recognized the scent as an unpalatable sauce much relished by the Jokapcul, who made it from the juices of fish they baked in the sun. The two scouts exchanged a glance and a nod and changed their course gulfward, flickering from shadow to shadow through the thickening trees nearer the Gulf.

Birdwhistle clacked his tongue in the call of a red-throated nutberry bird. Tracker stopped and moved only his head to look at him, then where Birdwhistle looked. Two Jokapcul soldiers in metal-studded leather jerkins lounged under a bumber tree, one leaning his back against its trunk, the other laying on his side. Neither wore his helmet nor held his sword in hand. Both Border Warders clenched their fists on their bows—these two would be easy to kill.

But they weren’t here to fight, they were here to find danger before danger found the refugee caravan.

At a barely discernible signal from Birdwhistle, the two scouts eased back until they were out of sight of the two enemy sentries.

You go that way, I’ll go this,
Birdwhistle said, using hand signals. Tracker nodded and they parted.

They passed the unwary sentries at a great enough distance to be unseen even if they walked erect in the open. But they walked neither erect nor in the open—they were wraiths, invisibly slipping through what shadows there were.

More than fifty yards beyond the sentries, growing noises came from the other side of a thicket of oddly segmented, reedlike trees that would bar passage to most men. But Birdwhistle wasn’t most men, he was a Zobran Border Warder, a former poacher, a man whose life had always depended on never being detected as he moved about patrolled royal preserves. He edged into the thicket, leaving almost no sign of his passage. The thicket wasn’t large, barely more than twenty yards wide and half that deep—and it was hollow. Two yards inside, the ground was almost clear, with reasonable shade cast by a canopy of slender leafs that sprouted from the upper portions of the reedlike trees. He darted to the far side of the hollow and flattened himself on the ground to slither between the close-packed trunks that made the thicket unpassable to most men. His body lengthed into it, he stopped and looked at a sight that froze his blood.

Three Jokapcul magicians sat in a semicircle facing the thicket. Between them and it hunkered several demons. One of the demons was a bedraggled Lalla Mkouma, another was a troll. Birdwhistle didn’t recognize the others. He couldn’t understand the words the magicians barked and growled at the demons but, curiously, he was able to make out what the demons said in reply. The magicians also seemed to understand the demons, though they didn’t speak in the barks and growls of the Jokapcul tongue.

"Why zhud ee?"
demanded a slight, man-shaped demon with ebon skin when a magician finished speaking.

"Naw likuu!"
the Lalla Mkouma piped, with a flounce of her hair.

A large demon with massive shoulders, wearing a cloth wrapped around its head and a vest stretched to bursting by the bulging muscles of its back, growled threateningly when one of the magicians made to strike at the Lalla Mkouma. The magician swallowed and put his hands down.

Another magician barked and growled, flicking an oxtail whisk in time with his words.

A very large, shaggy, black dog morphed into human shape when that magician finished and snarled,
"Ziz naw ooze vorst. Oo naw tellum ee doo ere!"
then briefly morphed into a low-lying cloud before returning to its shaggy dog shape.

"Naw likuu!"
the Lalla Mkouma piped again. The magician who had made to strike her before glanced at the very large demon that had threatened him and satisfied himself with glaring at her.

The first magician spoke again, then listened intently to the slender, black, little-man demon.

"Ee ead whatch ee whanns!"
the smallish demon declared haughtily.

The second magician then spoke at fair length. The demons looked at each other when he finished and seemed to sag.

The black dog resumed human shape long enough to say,
"Ee gottum boint,"
then rotated through cloud back to dog.

The third magician, silent until now, grinned wickedly and held up an open tin of pellets. He doled them out to the demons. All but the Lalla Mkouma bolted them down and held their hands out for more. The Lalla Mkouma turned her back on the magicians after receiving her one pellet and said,
"Ztill naw likuu."

Birdwhistle did not dare even to breathe; the miniature woman seemed to be looking right at him. She smiled around the pellet she nibbled on and winked, then flipped her hair and turned her head away. He slithered back as quickly as he could without making a noise that would give him away.

Ten minutes later he found Tracker, who was looking for him. They hurried away, intending to move to a safe distance from the Jokapcul before exchanging what they’d found. Before they had a chance to tell each other what they’d seen, they ran into Geshio, the Royal Lancer that Lieutenant Guma had sent to find them. Geshio was on foot, having left his horse a quarter mile back. They sped back to the point squad with their report while the Royal Lancer continued looking for other members of the squad.

The caravan was stopped a half mile behind the point squad. Company A was arrayed in battle formation across the caravan’s front. Company B was strung out along the south side. The less experienced and ready Company C screened the rear, while Sergeant Rammer drilled Company D to the north—the direction from which he and Spinner thought attack was least likely. Silent and Wolf patrolled the road and forest to the rear to give warning of anyone coming from behind.

Spinner waited with the point squad, along with Fletcher, Xundoe, and Alyline. Doli seemed to be closer to her old self and hovered near Spinner. When Birdwhistle and Tracker appeared, Captain Phard mounted his horse and rode forward to join the command group.

“Who did you leave in command?” Spinner asked when Phard reined in.

“Corp— Lieutenant Armana.”

Spinner nodded. He’d thought as much. He nervously returned his attention to Birdwhistle and Tracker, who arrived just then. He thought the fact they came back to report personally boded ill.

Birdwhistle told Tracker to go first; he suspected if he gave his report first, it might be deemed so important Tracker’s wouldn’t be listened to. When he finally heard what Tracker saw, he wondered if he should have gone first.

“There are Jokapcul on the shore,” Tracker said. “They looked like light and medium infantry. At any account, I didn’t see any horses. I was nearer the west end of their force than the east, so I couldn’t see all of them.” He took a deep breath. “But I estimate I saw half a thousand of them. There are probably more I couldn’t see from where I was.”

“What about magicians?” Xundoe asked.

“I didn’t see any,” Tracker replied before Birdwhistle could speak. “All I saw was the infantry, but I saw almost as many of them as we have proper soldiers, and there are probably more.”

“What were they doing?”

Tracker chuckled sadly. “Guarding prisoners. Soldiers.” He shook his head. “They didn’t have a proper camp set up yet, except for cages to keep the prisoners in. Or maybe they think that’s a proper camp.” He grimaced and shook his head. “The cages weren’t fit for dogs. They weren’t high enough for a man inside one to sit erect, and only as wide as they were high. A man could stretch out lengthwise in the cages, but most held three men, and they weren’t wide enough for three to lay side by side. There were rows of tents, but not enough for all the Jokapcul I saw. It seemed they were just beginning to pitch their own camp and taking their time about it. It looked almost like they were taking a rest from a long march before starting their work.”

“What uniforms did the prisoners wear?” Spinner asked. “And how many were there?”

“No uniforms. They wore no more than loincloths; some were altogether naked. I saw nearly as many prisoners as there were Jokapcul.” He shook his head. “It gets cold along the shore at night. I fear the cold will punish them severely.”

“If they didn’t have uniforms, how do you know the prisoners were soldiers?” Doli asked.

“There are signs. The way a man holds himself, how he shows the fear he feels. The way he examines his surroundings.”

“So you’re sure?” Alyline asked skeptically.