Steel And Flame (Book 1) (37 page)

It became a strange chase, or it seemed strange to
Marik since it was his first time in such.  Neither group rode horses and each
carried heavy equipment so they dared not run unless they wanted to spend all
their energy at once.  This resulted in a trot on both sides.

Fraser urged the unit faster to close the distance
between the two groups.  The Kings fired as they went, unable to aim accurately
due to their movement, but the rovers could not dodge as nimbly either.  Every
arrow missed though they kept the rovers jumping.  The archers marked where the
arrows fell so they could snatch them when they strode past.  Most rovers
carried bows they were unable to use; that would require stopping to turn and
fire.  They chose to maintain the run instead.

The Fourth finally caught up when they reached the
tree line.  At Fraser’s call the unit drew their weapons, then charged the last
few yards under a battle cry.

Fielo’s rovers wanted no part of it.  Close combat was
outside their specialty and their leader commanded them to scatter.  Like a
flock of birds startled from a field, the rovers broke to fly every direction
into the covering trees.  Most made it, except three were slow or befouled by
obstacles.  Those men were forced to fight the mercenaries who set upon them. 
They lasted only moments.  None got in so much as a scratch on the three Ninth
Squad men who cut them down.

Fraser faced a new decision.  He wavered only a moment
before delivering orders.  The men regrouped and pursued the rovers into the
trees, staying close together if far enough apart to keep off each other’s
toes.  They entered the woods to begin hunting.

It quickly became a cat and mouse game with no quick
resolution.  Marik wondered if Fraser had made the right decision while they
darted through the trees.  Their quarry was far better suited to this terrain
than the open fields and had decided to fight back.

The rovers spread across the woods, only one man here
and there, scattered everywhere.  While the mercenaries searched and dashed
from tree to tree, they had to dodge occasional arrows streaking at them from
cover, flying from any direction.  Among the trees the arrows seemed to part
the air much faster than before.

A sound from a thick berrybush bramble alerted Marik
to danger.  He stepped back quickly before a shaft pierced the skin of the tree
he had been standing near.  His already quickened heart hammered faster as he
glanced at the thick bark chips gouged from the trunk.  Marik judged it
impossible to penetrate the thorny brambles while dodging arrows at the same
time.  Instead he called to Edwin, who crept through the trees on the far side.

Edwin turned to see Marik waving an arm while hiding
behind a tree, pointing frantically toward the berry patch he approached.  He
looked closer, distinguishing a figure in a brown cloak with fallen leaves
stuck fast to it who struggled to withdraw from the ensnaring thorns.  Without
hesitation, Edwin shot the man before he could free himself or draw the sword
laying beside him.

After ensuring the man’s death, he flashed Marik an
all-clear sign.  They both resumed their hunt for the remaining rovers.

The afternoon continued in the same vein.  Marik
watched as two other men were dispatched in similar fashion.  He claimed no
enemies himself.  Fraser asked about kills anytime they encountered him amidst
the trees before he vanished to resume his own hunt or to find the other unit
members.

Two candlemarks after they had entered the
underbrush-choked woods, Marik estimated they had cut the rover party in half. 
Still searching for remnants of Fielo’s patrol party, he and three others
entered a clearing overgrown with knee high grass and fallen logs.  Marik’s
neck suddenly crawled, wrinkling in a most peculiar way, and he shouted to the
others.

They did not bother to question him.  All four dove
back behind the tree line at the same time a whistling arrow storm swarmed
through the space they had been.  A jolt at his side made Marik’s heart stop
when an arrow glanced off his sword sheath.  The arrows cut through the air at
top speed, shrieking far louder among in the trees than on the archery range in
Kingshome.  Shouts to other unit members brought them closer to aid, yet kept
them outside the immediate danger zone.

They were trapped behind the trees bordering the
clearing’s edge.  The four were in a highly dangerous position.  Marik wanted
to retreat further into the wood, to put additional cover between himself and
the unseen archers.  But were they still there or had they retreated after the
initial volley?  No way to tell.

Closest to him huddled Ashlin, a man Marik knew only
by name, he being one of the loners who kept to himself.  The slender tree
Ashlin had scrambled behind did not fully shelter him.  That clearly made him
nervous.  He glanced around hastily looking for better cover.  Marik watched
him closely.

Ashlin spotted a fallen tree larger than his own
farther back from the clearing and closer to Marik.  He gathered his courage,
then made a quick dash.  The moment he broke cover, the arrow songs renewed.

Arrows, far too many to be only the survivors of the
rover party, cut straight toward Ashlin.  As fast as he ran, they flew faster.

Most shafts missed, sparing Marik the sight of a man
turning into a pincushion before his eyes.  One punctured Ashlin’s left hand
and another pierced his throat.  His momentum carried his stumbling body to
Marik’s tree.  Ashlin fell to his hands and knees, denying the fact he was
already dead.  He clutched at his wheezing throat with his good hand.  A choking
spasm brought a bloody fountain erupting from his mouth that drenched Marik’s
breeches from the knees down.

Ashlin turned as he fell still.  He lay on his back,
his empty eyes staring at the younger King with blood still dribbled from his
mouth’s corner.  Marik did his best not to move a muscle.

Throughout the day he had kept his mind focused.  He
hunted men alongside hardened mercenaries and had no wish to look the green
youngling, stumbling, shuddering, nervous and frightened.  All winter he had
trained for the purpose of killing men, knowing full well that his life could
be the one prematurely ended.  But this…  For the first time that day, a
fearful shiver ran through him while he huddled frozen behind a tree, arrows
waiting to cut him down as surely as Ashlin if he flinched so much as an inch. 
Marik strove to face the prospect of his death with the same equanimity he
imaged the older mercenaries must command after their long years.

Sounds from the trees drew his attention.  Fraser gave
commands in quiet yells.  The words were indistinguishable to him, so they must
be to the men who were not pinned down.

An arrow sliced past him, from the other direction
this time.  He could see Landon kneeling beside cover further back from the
clearing.  When he noticed Marik looking at him, he paused a moment to raise a
hand before nocking a new arrow to his string.

Marik followed the veiled movement through dappled
forest light, finding the other four archers in the Fourth silently moving
north and south to cover the western clearing behind him.  He could not see
around his tree without risking the loss of his head, yet he understood Fraser
had ordered his men to keep the rovers from advancing on the trapped fighters.

“Hsst!  Marik!”  The words were hissed and low.  He found
Dietrik crouched behind the fallen tree Ashlin had dashed for.

“What?” he hissed back, wincing from his voice
sounding unnaturally loud.

“Fraser says to stay put.  Don’t move from your
position!”

“Do I look stupid?”

“Stay calm!  There’s more rovers than there should
be.  Those chaps must have sent a runner to fetch another group.”

With a glance at the many arrows piercing tree trunks
and littering the ground, Marik replied, “Tell me something I don’t already
know!”

“Stay still!  You could be there for a while until we
get you out of there.  At the worst, you can sneak off once night falls.”

“That’s four marks away!”

“It wasn’t my idea.  I’ve got to go.”

Dietrik half-crawled, half-slithered across the
ground, retreating to deeper cover.  Marik leaned against his tree, grateful he
had a wider one than Ashlin’s.  He fumbled until he finally removed the water
skin from his pack without the half-turn usually required.  That might have
exposed him to enemy fire.  At least his bedroll had been left in a pile with
the larger camp gear at the forest’s edge.  Everything large enough to hinder
movement through the trees remained there, but Fraser had insisted everyone
take their packs for fear the rovers would circle behind and either steal or
destroy them.

Marik drank while he watched one of the other two
prisoners, Bancroft he thought, whisper to a nearby blackberry bush.  So he
must also be receiving Fraser’s message.  He looked sideways at Ashlin’s corpse
lying beside him.  Pity the message had not arrived sooner.

For a time, the woods were silent, broken only by the
occasional arrow shriek.  The animals, sensing people rampaging around their
home, had all vacated, proving once again their intelligence was not so far
beneath man’s as men would like to believe.  Yellow forest light slowly faded
to gray while the sun descended.  Marik’s legs itched as Ashlin’s blood cooled
and dried against his skin.

He could not sit because he needed to remain mobile in
case a rover suddenly spun around his tree.  As such, he had stood in one place
for candlemarks, unable to loosen his cramped muscles by walking.  If a rover
did come upon him without warning, it was questionable if he could move quickly
in any case.

With nothing else to do, he counted arrows.  Could he
figure out how many archers there were and where they had been for their arrows
to land as they had?  Probably they had moved, but the exercise helped his mind
avoid dwelling on Ashlin.  It kept him from lingering on Ashlin’s endless,
blank stare.

Counting arrows kept his interest for only a few
minutes before his mind refused such an easy distraction from his peril.  His
gaze invariably came to rest on Ashlin’s lifeless eyes.  The flat quality they
had assumed quickly sent his mind racing for a new distraction.  He began
studying the fletching on the shafts, identifying which birds the feathers had
originated from and the crafting styles.  There were at least two different
techniques for affixing the feathers that he could see.  Did that mean that the
rover archers each made their own, or did Fielo have multiple fletchers
stocking his armory…

When he had exhausted all other possibilities, Marik
spent time listening with his full concentration, trying to discern enemy
movements.  While he heard no enemies, he did hear his unit mates moving among
the trees, taking new positions.

After recounting, he found archers beyond their
original five.  He guessed Fraser had sent men running back to fetch the bows
from the rovers they had cut down on their way to this clearing, arming the men
who knew how to use them.  Good thinking.  Marik welcomed the extra cover.

Night fell rapidly in the woods once the sun started
its evening dive.  Full dark finally arrived.  The time had come to get the
hells away from this tree, though he had appreciated its shelter.  Marik had
spent the last two candlemarks plotting his route across the ground to that
fallen tree.  From there he would follow Dietrik’s path.  With care for the
noise he might make, he dropped to all fours, ignoring his protesting muscles,
wincing at the audible popping from his stiff joints.  After saying a silent
farewell to Ashlin, he began his creeping crawl.  He gritted his teeth when his
mail faintly clinked.  It held him to an agonizingly slow pace.

Marik crawled due east at first, keeping his tree
between himself and his enemy.  No fire came in response.  He kept inching
forward.  The trunk of the fallen grandfather lay ten feet to his left.  Time
to leave the line he had been drawing.  With held breath, ready to sprint as fast
as he could if need be, he slowly crawled toward his cover.

Nothing.  It seemed darkness chose to be his friend
this night.  Still, that was no reason to hurry and foolishly make a noise in
haste.  After three minutes of careful maneuvering, avoiding the fallen
branches and twigs he had marked in his mind when he’d still been able to see
them, he reached the trunk’s safety.

For several minutes he rested, drinking from his water
skin, preparing for the next stage.  This part would be easier, having seen Dietrik
do it already and knowing where to move.  It went faster as well, requiring
less of the painfully slow caution that had been his guard during the first
leg.  He crawled faster, following his friend’s path and soon he gained the
deeper trees.

Marik prepared to breathe a sigh in relief when a
dagger’s cold steel suddenly pressed against his neck.  A low voice simply
asked, “Name?”

It was Landon, unable to make out who he had caught in
the dark and taking no chances.  Exhaling a relieved sigh after all, he
responded, “It’s me, you damned fool!  Help me up, I think my knees are shot.”

“Oh, good.  I was hoping you would make it out of
there.  Here.”  Landon offered a hand which he could not see until it hit him
in the face.  Marik took the gesture in the spirit it had been intended and
grasped the hand.