“A steep figure, but I’m sure the prince is good for it.” He propped himself
up on his elbows.
“Why have you persisted in attacking me, then, if you had all this money to
persuade me with?”
He coughed, without covering his mouth. “I respect no one until I’ve tested
them in combat. A habit taught to me by my beautiful mother.”
“A reckless policy.”
“I’ll not have you insulting my mother!”
Angelika sighed and let him rise. “Take us to your friends, then we can work
out the details of the exchange.”
Goatfield grinned and smacked his lips. He pointed up at the plateau. “They’re
waiting up there for us. You’re lucky, my little sweetmeat: for some reason,
they failed to come to my aid, even while you so cruelly mishandled me.”
“Perhaps they do not respect us until we test you in combat.”
They tramped laboriously up the incline, cascading more rocks down behind
them. They stopped at the top, when they reached the weedy ledge, and turned to
look at each other.
“After you,” Angelika told Toby.
“No, girlie—after you.”
Neither moved.
Franziskus strained up, clutching onto the tallest and sturdiest-seeming of
the weeds with both hands. He grunted and lurched; Angelika grabbed his legs and
pushed on them, sliding back. The halfling stepped in to brace her. Franziskus
dragged his torso through the weeds and kicked himself free of Angelika’s arms.
Then he kneeled to take Angelika by the elbows and haul her up. Goatfield moved
to grab her legs, but she muttered and kicked at his head. With Franziskus
pulling on her, she wriggled up, face-first into the maze of plants. He drew her
to her feet.
They were now standing on a green, boulder-strewn alpine meadow, that seemed
to be squeezed by two outcroppings of mountain rock that narrowed toward them.
The flatland rose gently for about three hundred yards, terminating in a dense
wood of tall pines.
Two figures, who had been sitting opposite one another on the outcroppings,
strode easily towards them. On the left, nearest Angelika, came an elf. Pink,
unblemished skin covered his angular face. His eyes were the colour of new
grass.
As he walked, his shoulder-length straw-coloured hair floated out behind him.
The elf was clad in a long sheepskin coat, worn over a linen shirt. His hide
trousers ended in ermine ruffs; his thin shoes were made of the same material,
and laced with rawhide. He smiled at Angelika. In his left hand he held a
gleaming sword, five feet long and little more than an inch wide, its blade
incised with runes.
Bounding at Franziskus was a second halfling, apparently bald under a cap of
iron, which was adorned with a six-inch spike on its crown, and a ring of
smaller jabbers which curved up like boar’s tusks along its rim. His right
eyebrow was black, his left was white; they met in the middle and made war with
one another. A wispy moustache, of grey and red hairs intermixed, sprawled
across his upper lip, then drooped down on each side, hanging past his jaw. He’d
threaded the ends through a series of metal beads, each moulded in the shape of
a moaning head. His frame was even broader than Toby Goatfield’s; his tight
shirt of mail links highlighted the blocky muscles of his chest and arms. He
wore mail on his legs, too, but his feet were bare. They had red and densely
tufted hair on the top of them; the soles were hardened by least an inch of
callus all around. He held a double-bladed war axe, its head more than two feet
wide. He curled his lips, revealing inflamed gums in full retreat from a set of
crooked, oblong teeth.
Toby, who was still stuck halfway up the ledge, interrupted his struggles to
introduce his companions. “This is Elennath,” he said, meaning the elf, “and my
boon companion, Henty Redpot. Better do as they say.”
Angelika danced back to kick Toby in the face. Screaming various blasphemies,
he fell from view, accompanied by the sound of sliding rock.
The elf said something about Angelika surrendering.
Angelika pulled her knife and ran for the trees, shouting for Franziskus to
do the same.
Henty lifted his axe above his head and charged at Franziskus. Franziskus
dived sideways to miss Henty’s blow, and landed hard on his ribs. He rolled out
of the path of another. Henty pressed his woody foot down on Franziskus’ ankle
and brought his axe cleaving down. Franziskus twisted out of the way. The axe sunk deep into loamy soil. Henty yanked at it.
Franziskus used his chance to get to his feet and run. Henty roared.
Elennath, meanwhile, pursued Angelika nimbly. He leapt over boulders, his
hair flowing behind him. Clasping his hands together around the hilt of his
sword, he dived at Angelika’s back. His swordpoint caught only air, but he
landed on Angelika’s legs, bringing her down. Her chin struck a rock. Her knife
hit the ground and bounced. He’d lost hold of his weapon too now, so he crawled
onto her back, to reach out for her knife. She elbowed him in the eye and
managed to flip over onto her back.
Franziskus ran for the pines. Henty chased him. Blindly, Angelika patted
grass, searching for her knife. Elennath grabbed her wrist and twisted it. He
seized her knife and drew it back to strike at her throat.
Franziskus, fleeing Henty, saw this. He changed direction, curving toward
Angelika, Henty at his heels.
Angelika’s weaker hand found a thick branch. She swung it, deflecting
Elennath’s stab. The blade grazed her hip, slicing a hole in her tunic.
Belatedly, Franziskus drew his sword. He flourished it, swiping it through
the air in the classic
intimidation
pattern he’d been taught by his
duelling master. Henty’s eyes followed its progress until Franziskus had the
manoeuvre halfway completed. Then he swiped with his axe in a backhand, bending
Franziskus’ rapier in half and sending it thudding into the weeds.
The weeds by the ledge shook. Toby’s head and arms appeared. Angelika’s eyes
widened. Elennath looked back. Angelika leapt into the air, knife outstretched,
and brought it down. Its tip cut left to right across the surface of Elennath’s
face, leaving a red diagonal line that stretched from his hairline, over the
bridge of his sublime and narrow nose, all the way to his jawbone. His hand went
to his face. Angelika ducked down, grabbed a rock, and lobbed it at Toby. A
thud. Toby disappeared, yowling.
Henty punched Franziskus in the chest, making him reel. Henty punched him in
the mouth then leaned in and recovered his axe. Franziskus ran for the trees.
Angelika saw him and broke for the trees, too.
Franziskus was the first to get there. He scrambled up the side of a pine.
Angelika reached the woods. She turned to hack at Elennath, whose coat and shirt
were now spackled with his blood. He easily skipped around her blows.
Henty rushed in, axe raised. Angelika skidded, filling the air with brown
pine needles, and tripped the massive halfling. Henty flipped nose-first into
the trunk of Franziskus’ tree. Elennath sliced his curving blade in at the
prone Angelika. “My face!” he shrieked. A dazed Henty fell back onto Angelika’s
side. Elennath’s dagger-point slammed into the mail shirt protecting Henty’s
ribs. Henty groaned. Angelika groaned. Elennath raised the dagger for another
strike, then saw that its point had snapped off.
Franziskus jumped from the tree, kicking Elennath in the temple and knocking
the elf down, before landing on him. He twisted Elennath’s elven hair in his
fist, then smacked its owner’s face into a tree trunk until he went limp.
He turned and saw that Angelika and Henty had both disengaged, and were on
their hands and knees, trembling and puffing. Henty’s spiked helm had fallen off
his head, revealing a sparse coating of coarse red fuzz. Angelika shot a
steadying hand out to grip a tree trunk, and forced herself to her feet. Henty
moaned and did the same, teetering in place. Franziskus weaved up behind him.
Henty angled himself in Franziskus’ direction but could only gape at him with
open-mouthed resignation. Franziskus seized one of his shoulders. Stumbling,
Angelika grabbed the other. She placed a hand on the back of Henty’s fuzzy head.
Together, they smashed his face into the nearest pine tree, twice. His eyes
rolled up and his legs went slack. He had only reached his knees when all signs
of consciousness abandoned him.
Franziskus put a finger to the halfling’s neck; a vigorous pulse still
coursed through him. Angelika checked the elf—he too was alive.
The elf had a heavy pack on his back. She hauled it off him and forced its
rusty buckles open. Inside was a small crossbow. She handed it to Franziskus.
“Do you know how to work one of these?”
Absently, he slipped a bolt in place, stuck his foot in the stirrup, and
cranked on the crannequin. “Passably. My friends and I toyed with such a bow,
one summer, out of childish curiosity.” The world was wavering before him still;
he wiggled the furrows of his forehead.
Digging deeper into the pack, Angelika found what she really wanted: a fat
loop of cord. It was rawhide, and there were many feet of it. “Seems like they
expected to catch themselves a prisoner,” she said, taking her knife to cut off
a suitable length of it. She wrapped it around Henty, who was still propped
against the tree.
“Is it wise to spare these blackguards?” Franziskus asked. He had finished
cranking the bow and held it up in firing position, squinting. He had it pointed
at a large burl in a tree, which would make an acceptable target for practice.
“Are you saying we should slay defenceless foes? I’m surprised at you.”
“They’re common cutthroats, to whom the laws of mercy do not apply.”
Toby Goatfield stepped into the forest and advanced holding a dagger held
above his head. Franziskus spun round and aimed from the hip. He shot the bolt
through the palm of Toby’s weapon-hand and into a tree, fixing him to it.
Goatfield looked at the wound and fainted. As he fell the bolt popped from the
bark.
“Nice shot,” Angelika said.
“Thank you,” said Franziskus.
“Leaving them alive might delay the Kopfs, if they come this way,” said
Angelika. “They’ll want to untie them and ask some questions. With any luck, a
further melee will ensue.” She and Franziskus leaned Toby against the tree and
tied him up, then did the same with Elennath. Franziskus found Elennath’s elven
sword and claimed it as a replacement for his ruined rapier. Angelika retrieved
her lost knife. As they readied themselves to depart, Franziskus took the
crossbow and bashed it into a tree, smashing it to bits.
“What did you do that for?” she asked him.
“It is not a weapon suitable for a gentleman,” he replied.
Angelika had to admit they lacked a plan and that their movements were
essentially aimless. They tramped through the alpine wood, in search of higher
elevations. They moved through tangled brush, along a narrow natural terrace
between slopes. The pines crowded thickly together, as if mocking their
scrappier, more tenacious cousins, who clung to the rocky slopes both above and
below them. They were choosing the easiest paths, simply because they were easy.
As they travelled, she occupied her mind by devising various scathing comments
which she could direct at Franziskus for destroying a piece of equipment as
useful and valuable as a crossbow.
“Lukas’ movements would have been aimless, too,” Angelika said. “I know this
terrain a little, whereas he grew up in privilege in some estate in Averheim.”
“He had a pair of soldiers with him, though. They might know how to survive
in the pass.”
She stopped. There was forest to the left of them, to the right, at the front
and at the back. “So where did they go?”
“I’d look for a cave, and search for a route higher in the peaks.”
She held her hand up. “Wait. Can you hear that?” She paused, to let
Franziskus listen.
“No, what?”
“Running water. That’s where they’d stop, if they were here at all. They’d
refill their waterskins, and maybe wait to catch any game that came to drink at
the brook.”
They followed the sound and, about a quarter of an hour later, found a stream
flowing through a shallow groove of rock. They walked west along its stony banks
until they reached a sheltered spot where the water widened out into a pool. A
waterfall filled the pool from above; the surrounding rock, large and flat, made
an obvious spot to camp. Franziskus refilled their skins as Angelika inspected
the rock, then the bush around it. She waved Franziskus over.
“Here’s where they camped,” she said, pointing at the ground. Franziskus
couldn’t understand what he was meant to see—to him there was nothing more
than pine needles. “They covered their tracks—as you’d do if you thought you
were being chased—but this is where the fire was. And here.” She kicked at a
pile of leaves and dead branches, uncovering some strips of torn clothing that
had deep brown stains soaked into the fibres. “Bandages. That’s what tells me it
was them, and not just any group of woodsmen or foragers. At least one of them
was wounded.”
“But there is nothing here that proves it was Lukas and his companions.”
“What do you expect, that he’d carve his family crest on a tree?”
“It still seems doubtful. We should return to the Castello, and seek honest
labour.”
She bounded up to the hill beside the waterfall. It was scarred with vertical
slashes of mud, where the underbrush had been scraped away. “Someone made their
way up this hill. Not so recently, though—you can see shoots coming up inside
the marks. Those tracks could easily be eight weeks old. We’ve found our trail!”
Using saplings and bushes as handholds, she made her way up the treacherous
hill.
Franziskus took a tentative hop up onto the slope, then slid back. The
coating of damp needles below his feet made this just as hard to climb as the rockslide. “Aren’t you still hurting from that
fight?” he called up at her.