Demontech: Rally Point: 2 (Demontech Book 2) (7 page)

Haft’s grin snapped to a scowl.

“We don’t really need a roster,” Spinner said. Haft and I know the soldiers and other men who have been with us, and we’ll get to know Guma and the others soon enough.”

“Spinner,” Alyline said, “you may know their names, but do you know what skills they have beyond fighting and hunting? We need a roster. I’ll make it if I must, but I think the men will be more cooperative about giving information if you make the roster.”

“But . . .”

“Make a roster. Note which men have their wives and children with them and what skills they have.”

“We aren’t a little group anymore,” Zweepee broke in. “We have almost a hundred and fifty people now. We need to know these things.”

“But . . .”

“We’ve begun an inventory of goods,” Doli said, “but some of the people are reluctant to tell us everything they have. They need our
commander
to make the request official. You’re the only one who can do that, Spinner.”

The tip of Haft’s tongue poked between his lips as looked at Spinner.
Commander?
It was a shame that as moon-eyed Doli was over Spinner, she didn’t seem to like him, Haft, at all—and Alyline had no more use for him than she did Spinner. If either of them liked him even a
little
bit, he could probably get her and Zweepee to say
he
was the commander.
He
wouldn’t be acting so thick headed about it if the women were calling
him
the commander! He glanced at Guma. The lancer seemed confused and uncomfortable; maybe he was beginning to understand that neither of the Frangerian Marines was an officer.
Hmpf!
As if either was wearing officer’s rank insignia. Why—

“We don’t have time to make an inventory,” Spinner said. “We’re pulling out first thing in the morning.”

“No we aren’t,” Alyline said. “We need another wagon. Do we have a wainwright? Carpenters? A wheelwright? Now get that roster made so we know what crafts we have. And hope we have the skills to make a wagon; we’ll move faster if we have an extra wagon to carry the small children.” She spun on her heel and marched back to the middle of the camp. Doli and Zweepee went after her.

“Well,
commander,
” Haft said with amusement, “shall we get started on that roster?”

As it happened, not only were there men with backgrounds as a wainwright, a wheelwright, and two carpenters, they also had a hooper, a cartwright, a brewer, a chandler, a coldren, a cooper, a farrier, a lorimer, three masons, a mulliner, a saddler, two sawyers, a tanner, and a former apprentice baker, as well as men trained in several other crafts. Alyline was particularly interested in the tucker and the dyer, and spent some time with them detailing her clothing requirements. They were so dazzled by her beauty and what she wanted that they swore to come up with the garments she wanted, and properly dyed.

It took three days to build the extra wagon—the sawyers didn’t have the right saws to cut proper boards, the hooper lacked the iron strapping with which to clad the wheels, and all of the men involved in making the wagon were out of practice in their crafts. But it was finally ready and the wagon rolled, filled with young children who shouted in glee at riding in the ungainly thing.

For the first time in the months ago since they’d first turned northeast, away from Zobra City’s burning harbor, Spinner and Haft had more recent information about Jokapcul movement along the coast. As of two months after capturing capital city, the Jokapcul hadn’t begun moving east into the Princedons. That information was now more than a month old, but during that month and more, both parties had watched so many Jokapcul units moving through Zobra and north into Skragland that it seemed unlikely that the invaders had yet begun to move east. Even if the Jokapcul had entered the westernmost of the small principalities on the long peninsula, the company could likely bypass enemy units easily enough and make its way to a port that was still free. They would head for the ocean coast of the Princedons.

“Which way?” Haft asked. He let his horse turn to face away from the hot wind blowing from the north, but held the reins so it didn’t begin to move south.

“I don’t know,” Spinner murmured. The wind that whipped around them tore the words from his mouth and cast them away almost before Haft could hear them. His horse wanted to face south as well.

The road they’d followed into the root of the Princedons meandered into the southern fringe of the Eastern Waste, where it merged with the southwestern corner of the Low Desert. For two days the lack of trees or other high growth had allowed long sight lines and they hadn’t bothered to put out scouts. They were in an arid land covered with tough grasses and spotted with low-lying shrubs. Here and there stunted, twisted, trees endured a hard life. Spinner looked slowly side to side, along the paths of the two trails that forked from where they stood. The left fork continued east and a little bit north, leading into a rising land that turned sere so abruptly a sharp brown line marked the place of change. The grass of the arid land almost completely disappeared and the shrubs were smaller and far fewer. There were no trees to the east. That fork led to the head of Princedon Gulf. The right fork descended a very gentle slope. In that direction the land gradually turned from arid to healthy-but-dry to lush. The outlying trees of a great forest stood an hour’s easy ride distant.

Haft curled his hands around his eyes and looked east along the road into the sere land. The sun was almost directly overhead and heat radiated from the rocky surface. The air shimmered above it. Tiny specks drifted high in the sky; carrion eaters on watch for the carcass of anything foolish enough to wander into that outcropping of the Low Desert.

“It fades out,” he said.

“What?” Spinner asked. He also looked through curled hands into the Low Desert.

“The road. It only goes a short way into the desert, then it fades to nothing.”

Spinner grunted.

“Now down there,” Haft pointed with his chin toward the distant mountains that seemed to float above the forest, “we’ll find water and food. And maybe a ship home.”

Spinner grunted. “If the Jokapcul haven’t moved east.” They’d met only a few more refugees since encountering the group guarded by the Royal Lancers, and those had no recent knowledge. Still, those people had been accepted into the company. But without newer information, they had to wonder whether the Jokapcul might have resumed their eastward advance. If they had, the next place they would be was the Princedon Peninsula. If they had moved into the Princedons, they controlled the ports on the southern coast for as far east as they had gone. Spinner and Haft had made port in the Princedons a few times and they knew none of its principalities was strong enough to offer more than token resistance to the invaders. The gulf coast was more likely to be free. But Princedon Gulf was shallow toward its western end, and had little in the way of ocean shipping, its harbors mostly held shallow-draft fishing craft.

Spinner looked toward the forest. Something gray was loping in their direction.

“Wolf’s coming back,” he said.

Haft grimaced. He doubted he’d ever trust the overly intelligent wolf that had attached himself to their company somewhere in upper Zobra. At least he
thought
they’d made it into Zobra when the wolf first joined them; they hadn’t been traveling on roads clogged with refugees and the border was unmarked.

Two sets of hooves clopped behind them, one set those of a horse, the other sounded too loud to be merely a horse. The hooves came to a stop and they turned to see who was with Silent, the rider of the thing that sounded too big to be a horse.

“We need provisioning,” Fletcher said.

Haft turned to him and nodded, feeling vindicated.

“I’m hungry enough to eat one of these puny ponies,” Silent grumbled. His mount looked far too large to be a horse, though horse it was.

“Yes,” Spinner said so softly the wind tore the word away before the others heard it. Food had been hard to come by since the road led them to the merge of the Eastern Waste with the Low Desert; they were on strict rationing.

Another set of hooves clopped up, angry sounding in their haste, and didn’t stop until they were between Spinner and Haft; Fletcher had to dance his horse aside to avoid a collision with the newcomer.

“Why do we stop here?” demanded Alyline, the Golden Girl, though she hadn’t been gold for some time. Her short vest, open between her breasts but laced to keep the sides from flying away, was silk, its mauve dye was running. The pantaloons that covered her legs were a garish orange flannel. A maroon girdle was tied below her bare waist. She wasn’t at all happy with the tucker and dyer who had promised her new garments and so far had delivered only those, which she didn’t think an improvement over the patchwork garments she’d stitched together herself from scraps of cloth.

Haft tried to ignore the Golden Girl. Spinner glanced at her with the pained eyes of an unjustly scorned suitor, but didn’t answer. Instead, he looked again toward the approaching wolf.

Wolf saw the five people looking at him, stopped, and stood with his flank toward them. He raised one forepaw and awkwardly pointed toward the forest. His tongue lolled and he nodded. He looked at the four unmoving people and cocked his head expectantly. When they still didn’t move, he looked away for a moment, as though thinking. Abruptly, he went on the alert for a second, then pounced. He worried his head back and forth between his outstretched paws, as though dispatching a careless rabbit. Finished with his make-believe kill, he bounded back to his feet and spun around a couple of times, finishing with his hindquarters toward them and his head looking back over his shoulder. His meaning was clear:

Get a move on, people, there’s food this way.

“What are you waiting for?” Alyline demanded. “We have a lot of people who are hungry and thirsty. They need food and water.” She flicked her stallion’s reins and heeled his flanks. The horse began cantering toward the waiting wolf.

Spinner looked after her unhappily, then turned his horse onto the right fork and followed at a walk. He removed his cloak and turned it so the leafy green side showed rather than the sandy brown and tan he’d shown during the trek these past several days.

“This is the rally point,” he said. “Pass the word to everybody. Fletcher,” he said when he didn’t see Haft—where had he gone to?—and added, “Send scouts ahead.”

“Right.” Fletcher turned his horse about. Spinner hadn’t seen Haft because he had already gone back to the main body of the band to gather his normal trio of scouts. Haft had already turned his cloak green side out.

“Wait for me!” Xundoe cried after Spinner. The Zobran army mage who was the sole survivor of his guard company when Spinner and Haft found him, urged his pony into a trot. A donkey laden with two mage chests followed the tether that ran from its bridle to the pony’s saddle.

Haft grinned as he called out the names of his men. “Archer, Hunter, Birdwhistle, let’s go. We need to check out the forest.” He pointed. The three eagerly joined him; they preferred being out front to riding with the main body. They happily donned mottled-green surcoats once more.

“Mister Fletcher, the troops are yours,” Haft said when Fletcher arrived. He clumsily heeled his mare and led his scouts in a cross-country canter toward the forest.

Fletcher watched the four until they were far enough away that they couldn’t possibly hear what he said. “Kocsokoz, Kovasch, Meszaros, ride with me. The rest of you follow Spinner.” His trio were Skraglander army veterans; he preferred Skraglanders to any of the Zobrans. Unlike Zobra, Skragland hadn’t been completely defeated—yet. To Fletcher, that meant the morale and self-confidence of his Skragland Borderers were probably higher, and their lust for vengeance lower. He was more confident they would fight smart when a fight came—and a fight was likely in the Princedons. Fletcher and his trio set out at a trot behind Haft and his three. The Skraglanders untied their fur cloaks from their bindings on the back of their saddles and hung them over their shoulders as they trotted. They wouldn’t be as hard to spot under the trees as the Zobrans, but the shaggy cloaks and the horns on their helmets might make a foe mistake them for animals for an instant—and an instant might be all they needed at the beginning of a fight.

Except for two who dropped out to act as rear security, the other fighters took the road; they’d soon enough catch up with the leaders. Nobody noticed the solitary bee that circled above them.

At the start of the forest proper, Haft and his trio of scouts turned toward the road the rest of the company traveled on and followed it into the forest. They leaned forward on their horses, peered deeply into the shadows to the sides of the road, looked sharply to the front, listened intently to the forest sounds, sniffed the smells of vegetation and wandering animals. The road was a mere rutted track on which grew enough grass and wild flowers to tell them it had seen spare use for some time. A hundred yards into the trees they dismounted then tethered their mounts for the company to pick up. Haft signed Archer and Hunter to go into the forest on the right side of the road, he and Birdwhistle went into it on the left. One man in each pair kept visual contact with the road; the other went deeper into the forest but maintained contact with the road watcher. They advanced silently. Wolf watched to see how the men arrayed themselves, then ranged ahead of them.

Air wafted softly under the trees as relief from the heat of the sun, and quickly evaporated the sheen of sweat that had covered their bodies. The scouts were alive to the sounds and sights of the forest: Birds sang and squirrels chittered as they darted and skittered about their business in the trees. Woodpeckers
rat-a-tatt
ed. Insects buzzed and flitted about; salt-eaters and bloodsuckers inspected the exposed skin of the scouts and supped on the more succulent bits. A lone bee bumbled about in seeming vain search for nectar. Up ahead a pack of feral dogs bayed in pursuit of its dinner, a deer cried out its death. Soon after, they heard canine yelps—followed by a wolf’s victorious howl.