Forest For The Trees (Book 3) (50 page)

In fact, that was an option that sparkled attractively
in his mind.  His years with the Kings had been nice ones.  It had been an
achievement to earn a place in their ranks but it had never occurred to him
that it would be a lifelong career path.  Whenever it had crossed his mind,
however briefly, he had dismissed it with the thought that he would know when
it was time to move on.

It
had
been time to leave months earlier.  But
a deeper friendship than he had ever known forestalled his departure.  Delayed
it until the opportunity vanished.  Those ties had held him to an untenable
position.

As they still did.  Dietrik scanned the cloudless sky,
looking for answers.  If they were writ in the heavens, then the gods had
chosen a means of inscribing that lay beyond a simple mercenary’s ability to
discern.

*        *        *        *        *

Adrian could see, instantly, that something was
wrong.  The sort of wrong that meant a far greater inconvenience than a delay
or a misunderstanding that required time to explain.

“Ah…I see,” the patrol soldier said hesitantly to
Jide.  “Well.  I’ll go and take that up with the captain.”  His about-face cut
a line a bit
too
sharp, Adrian thought.

Jide sensed it as well.  He sidled back several steps
to mutter under his breath.  “I don’t like the current here.  I haven’t seen a
greedy eye-gleam like that in a dog’s age.  Since we left Arronath.”

“Watch them closely,” Adrian whispered back.  “We have
been out of communication too long.  Once we return we can decide if whatever
scheme this group works at is worth the trouble of upsetting, provided we do
not have too many other crises on our hands.”

“That’s not what I meant.”  Adrian could hear the
frown in Jide’s words.  The evening darkness prevented the sentiment from
passing in any other form.  “He was straight business until I declared we were
escorting you back to the staging point.  That’s when he turned shifty.”

“It is late, Jide,” Adrian sighed.  “And no patrol man
enjoys running into a superior officer while out on duty.  It puts them in the
jeweler’s monocle, their every slight mistake noticed.”

Jide leaned closer.  “Adrian, this feels wrong, damn
it!”

“Do not draw attention,” the general hissed back. 
“Worry about trouble when trouble comes.  For the nonce, I need to return to
our command structure!  Honestly, I could not care less how much they are
lining their pockets with local resources.  There are larger problems to deal
with.”

Whatever Jide might have said went unmentioned.  The
patrol soldier returned with a second man who must be the unit’s captain.  “And
what do we have in the middle of the night?  Supposedly a dead general come
back to life, is it?”

“Take caution with your phrasing,” Adrian replied in a
cold tone.  “I have been through as many trials as I care to face.”

The captain ran an appraising look over Adrian from
head to toe through the moonlight.  “If’n it’s true you’re Adrian, then I
suppose you have.  Tell me, what happened to all your insignia?  The general
had enough to cover a wagon.”

Adrian’s fingers traced over the bare shoulders of the
non-uniform shirt.  Jide had bartered for it from a caravan shortly after their
escape.  “My appearance, as it stands, has no bearing on my identity.  Whether
you believe my claim or not, you have a duty to escort me to the nearest staging
point, either to verify who I am or to have me placed in confinement for
fraud.”

Both parties waited while the captain evaluated the
truth in Adrian’s statement.  At last he nodded.  “Ye’ae, I supposed that’s
true enough.  You’ve got me convinced you probably are the general.”

His colloquial accent,
from a region near the
Tillsar border unless I am severely mistaken
, rubbed raw nerves.  Most of
his unpleasant experiences as a military leader had transpired in those
regions.

“Then I expect…” Adrian trailed off.  The moment the
captain had uttered his last words, his men had spread out silently through the
darkness.  Adrian recognized it at once as flanking maneuvers.

Jide let out a shout.  The bodyguards drew their
swords while the patrol soldiers closed in from three sides.

Adrian blinked stupidly for several seconds before he
fumbled for his blade.  By the blazes, what could the patrol captain possibly
be
thinking
?  Did he believe Adrian’s little party were imposters after
all, and intended to arrest them on the spot?  That seemed the only logical
explanation, yet the severity of the sudden fighting failed to coincide with
this notion.

His nine loyal bodyguards, three unarmed, faced twelve
opponents.  Jide whirled in a cyclone of slashes against three soldiers who
wanted to overwhelm him.  They kept sliding sideways in attempts to move into
his blind side but Jide, a master swordsman of highest degree, was not fooled
for an instant.

The captain hollered in a rising temper.  “Take them
down!  Down I say, but for him!  Or the general will have your hides if’n I
leave any scraps for him!”

Confusion saturated Adrian’s mind.  The mild headache
that had plagued him since dawn grew to a blacksmith’s thudding.  He darted at
the captain, sword bared.  His quick stroke met the patrol leader’s blade the
same instant a death cry shrieked from behind.  One of his bodyguards was
slain.

The night fell away around him.  Adrian could feel it
melting, the past blooming through the holes until the present was only a dim
memory.  Though well practiced with Jide as a sparring partner, Adrian had not
personally fought for his life in over two decades.  Not since he had been
several rungs down the command ladder.  A regimental officer taking his men
into harm’s way in order to achieve mission objectives.

His body remembered the deadly dance even as his mind
still grappled with the unreality that a soldier, one of the officers in
his
army, had dared to act thus against him.  The army he had lovingly purged of
its soiled spirits and corrupted crooks.  Or as many of them as it was possible
for him to find and uproot.

He returned a slash for every attack the captain sent
at him.  The man was no slouch.  Adrian commended him silently for his ability,
though four more moves into the warrior’s waltz would expose the man’s legs. 
Then it would be over.  Three moves…two…

One of Jide’s opponents leapt wide to avoid a slash
that had begun as a ricochet off his comrade’s elbow guard.  Adrian’s sword
nicked his arm.  The spoiled stroke faltered, and the captain took advantage
with a wide slice that tore into Adrian’s upper arm.

Adrian had seen the blow coming.  Seeing it had not
been enough.  His body, nowhere near as young as it once had been, lacked the
old reflexes.  Fire burned in a sharp line along the wound bitten by the hungry
steel.

His fingers loosened until instinct forced his hand to
spasm shut.  By rights his arm should have been severed except the patrol
captain had pulled the blow.  He wanted to bring Adrian back as a prisoner
rather than a corpse.  Adrian back-stepped so quickly he nearly stumbled.  The
captain’s expression tightened in concentration as he pressed harder.

Adrian’s heel struck a body on the ground.  The sudden
obstacle unbalanced him, causing the trip he had been fighting.  He held his
sword out sideways to prevent an accidental fall onto it.  From the ground, he
struggled to rise while his arm screamed in agony.

That captain advanced, accompanied by two of the men
who had started the fight by facing his bodyguards.  Human forms were
motionless on the ground under the ebon sky.  How many were still fighting, and
who did they pay allegiance to?

One of his loyal guards, a man whom Adrian had known
for the last six years, dashed between the faltering general and the three assailants. 
Adrian cried out when his sword was deflected by the first, leaving him exposed
to the thrusting swords of the others.  He fought to the end, wheezing his
defiance into the blood-soaked grass.  They stepped over his dying form to
claim Adrian.

The captain opened his mouth to speak.  Jide
interrupted him.  His flashing blade bit into the neck of the leftmost man
before they realized their rears were exposed.

Adrian leapt forward.  His unsteady legs held him
enough to propel him forcefully in the low-to-the-ground lunge that was the
specialty of his combat style.

His sword lanced into the second soldier’s chest.  In
heartbeats, the captain stood alone.

“Don’t!” Adrian cried to Jide.  The leather and body
suction fought him, denying him easy retrieval of his weapon.  “We must have
answers from him!”

A scream split the night behind him.  He freed his
sword at last and hurried to Jide’s side.

Jide had ripped a gashing hole in the captain’s left
shoulder.  The man had collapsed to the ground, all function in his arm lost. 
Before he could recover, before he could think of what to do, Jide kicked him
hard in the face.  Smashed flesh tore.  Shattered teeth spewed from between his
lips in a bloody froth.  Adrian expected the man’s jaw must have broken.

“I will see to him,” Adrian hastily said, placing a
hand on Jide’s arm when the bandit made to kick anew.  “He will not be able to
tell us much if he is digesting his teeth.  Make certain his cohorts are no
longer a threat, and find out how many of our men are still with us.”

Jide whipped his blade in a curt, sharp flick that
divested it of the excess blood dripping from its tip.  He became a shadow
ghosting between shapeless mounds populating the silent battleground, a
different shade of black moving through the night.

Adrian grabbed a handful of the moaning captain’s
shirt and cleaned his blade.  After re-sheathing it, he knelt to peer into his
eyes.  “I demand a full explanation of this…atrocity!  If I am satisfied, I
will be merciful and grant you a summary execution here and now.  Otherwise I
will make an example of you before the whole of Arronath!  Well?  Speak!”

A weak moan was the only reply offered.  Adrian
threatened nothing short of reinstituting the worst punishments he had drummed
from the accepted practices, growing angrier with every passing moment, to no
avail.  His loyal men killed so unexpectedly…and for what reason?  To advance a
corrupt man’s selfish ambitions?  To cover a crime in progress that would ruin
the careers of those involved were it to come into the light?  Rage burned
hotly as each guard’s name and years of dedicated service echoed through his
skull.

His arm throbbed from the sword cut.  Worse, his head
felt as if a stiletto were repeatedly stabbing through his scalp to stir his brains. 
He nearly kicked the whimpering captain himself at the man’s stubborn
persistent incoherency.

Jide appeared from behind the captain.  He knelt fast
as a striking snake, grabbed a handful of hair to tilt the face upward to meet
his gaze and, in a silky voice laced with venom, husked, “It’s only the three
of us out here, farm boy.  Your men are dead.  Our men are dead.  I hope
whatever hell you end up in needs a few potato farmers, or else you’ll be shit
out of luck and looking for work before dawn shines on me.”

The captain stared dumbly at Jide for several long
moments, blood spilling over broken teeth.  At last, “Shoulda recognized you,”
he mumbled.  “That dry-land pirate everyone talks about.  You
would
have
your fingers in…any shady dealings…”

“Glad you can see the damned chainmail for the links
it’s made of after all.”  He shook the man roughly.  “Now I want to hear
anything you might think we’d have a keen interest in!”

An apparent resignation entered the man’s eyes when
Jide manhandled him with increasing roughness.  Adrian, sickened by the affair,
gave the captain something to think about.  “It appears that he would rather
undergo a full court’s martial, in hopes that we will fail to uncover whatever
business he was about this night, I have no doubts.  I assure you that we will
learn the truth and your crimes be exposed, along with any cohorts you seek to
protect through your silence.”

Jide frowned at his old friend’s words.  “That won’t
be good enough by a dog’s leg this time, Adrian.”  He yanked hard on the
captain’s hair until he cried out.  “Moving goods through the night or standing
watch for do-gooders out to ruin a well-laid scheme reeks a different smell
than what’s coming off this maggot.  And I’ve got questions.”

“No less than I.”  Adrian could feel his temples
throbbing.  After the hard trek through enemy territories, slinking like the
meanest refugees, for it to end in…this!  Good men slain at one of his own’s
hand.  A man given a position of trust in his army.  The army which once again
shone with the honor it had known so very long ago, created to combat the chaos
from whence it had been born.

“Start with your moxy,” Jide growled.  “You didn’t
dare say shit or go blind until
after
you thought you had the real
General Adrian Ceylon in front of you.  What did you possibly think you could
make of having him at your mercy?”

“Only what any self-respecting soldier would do,” he
exclaimed to make Jide stop his violent shaking.