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“It would be a fine thing to make a hole in the bastards, Milord,” Sir Yarran observed. Trianal glanced at him and nodded, and the older knight continued in a thoughtful tone. “All the same, we’ve no evidence they’ve done aught but ride about. And if it should happen they’re in Lord Erathian’s colors, they’ve every right to be moving about his lands.”
“They do,” Trianal agreed. “But if they’re not in Erathian’s colors, or if it should happen that they’re in … someone else’s colors, then we’d certainly have a responsibility to ask them who they are and why they were here, wouldn’t we?” He smiled with predatory humor. “After all, Lord Warden Erathian is also my uncle’s vassal. It’s clearly my responsibility to ensure that strange armsmen aren’t violating his territory or threatening the security of his holding.”
“Aye, that it is,” Sir Yarran said with a toothy smile of admiration for the youngster’s pious tone.
“Well, in that case,” Trianal said, “let’s see if we can’t just catch up to ask them.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
“They’re back there, all right, Sir,” Sergeant Evauhlt said.
The Golden Vale armsman was perched in one of the sturdier trees, peering back to the east through a spyglass at a winking point of light. The long-barreled glass was much heavier and clumsier than the Axeman double-glass in the case hanging from Sir Fahlthu’s weapons harness. It was, however, almost as powerful and far cheaper, and Fahlthu had no intention of trusting his prized glasses to any clumsy-fingered cavalry trooper. Even a signaler like Evauhlt.
“How many of them?” he asked, gazing up into the oak.
“The scouts say six or seven score, Sir,” Evauhlt reported, still watching the flash of the heliograph from the steep hill further into the swamp. The lookouts atop it could see over the trees sheltering Fahlthu’s troopers and their waiting position to the line of hills beyond. They’d been diligently keeping watch on their crests since dawn, in anticipation of his scouting parties’ return, and passing their reports to the signal post located far enough down the hill for the swampland’s low-growing trees and brush to hide its heliograph’s flash from anyone to the west.
Fahlthu grunted in acknowledgment of Evauhlt’s report and drummed the fingers of his right hand on the hilt of his saber. That estimate of the enemy’s numbers was higher than he’d hoped it might be when the scouts watching his back trail first reported that his tracks were being followed. On the other hand, the other side thought they were still chasing mere horse thieves. They didn’t know the rules of the game had changed… .
“Well, Master Brownsaddle,” he observed to the man beside him. “So much for hiding our tracks.”
He knew the criticism implicit in his tone was less than fair, but he really didn’t care very much at the moment. The more he saw of “Brownsaddle,” the less he liked. Not because the man wasn’t competent—in fact, he was almost irritatingly capable. Indeed, much of Fahlthu’s unease where “Brownsaddle” was concerned stemmed from the fact that the man was too capable for who and what he claimed to be. Fahlthu had the instincts of a successful mercenary, and they insisted that “Brownsaddle” proved there was even more going on here than Sir Chalthar had explained when he issued Lord Saratic’s orders.
“If it were still raining, that would be one thing, Sir,” Darnas Warshoe replied—respectfully, but with enough patience in his voice to show his opinion of Fahlthu’s critical tone. “As it is—” He shrugged. “You can’t hide the tracks of that many horses in weather like this, whatever you do. All you can do is try to put them somewhere no one will look for them—like the bottom of a ravine.”
Fahlthu grunted again. This time he sounded remarkably like an irritated boar as he considered his options. Those same instincts which distrusted “Brownsaddle” urged him to avoid any closer contact with his pursuers. It wasn’t as if that would be difficult to do, although Sir Trianal had made considerably better time to this point than Fahlthu had anticipated. The boy had reacted quickly and pressed hard, the Golden Vale armsman acknowledged. Not hard enough to tire his horses as much as Fahlthu had hoped for, unfortunately, but that might be Sir Yarran’s doing. And however quickly they’d gotten here, and however fresh their mounts might be, Sir Fahlthu still had the advantage of position. Not to mention guides who knew their way through this miserable, mucky swamp. Still, Trianal’s force was considerably larger than Halnahk had anticipated when he issued the detailed instructions which gifted Fahlthu with responsibility for this initial operation. Fahlthu would have been far happier if the youngster’s command had been closer to the small, isolated scouting forces he’d expected to encounter during the opening phases of the new campaign.
Unfortunately, now that contact had been made at all, Halnahk’s orders—and, worse, Sir Chalthar’s—were explicit.
“Milord, there’s something wrong,” Sir Yarran said.
Trianal turned in the saddle, eyebrows arching in his open-faced helm.
“What?” he asked his adviser.
“That’s more than I can say,” Yarran replied slowly. He frowned and swiveled his head, sweeping the steadily approaching belt of woodland with his eyes, wondering what had set his instincts so abruptly on edge. “It’s just—”
Then he had it, and his eyes narrowed.
“Look there, to the left!” he said urgently. “There—by that clump of oaks!”
“Which oaks? The ones on that hill?”
“No, Sir—further left. Another thirty yards!”
“All right,” Trianal said. “What about them?”
“Look at the birds,” Yarran said, waving one hand at the small flock—no more than ten or fifteen—which had just launched into the air and now gyrated sharply above the trees. Trianal looked puzzled, and the older knight shook his head.
“Lad,” he said, forgetting formality in his need to make the youngster understand, “something made them decide to take off just now. Something that spooked them.”
Trianal looked at him, then back at the trees from which the birds had come, and his mind raced. There might be any number of perfectly ordinary explanations for their behavior, including an abortive pounce by one of the wildcats who made the Bogs their home. But he couldn’t discount Yarran’s veteran distrust of coincidence.
Yet the trees were a good hundred yards from where the ravine entered the woodland. If there was someone in there, then they were a long way from the only reasonably clear path through the tangled brush. But the oaks weren’t very far back from the edge of the undergrowth. Just far enough for the dense brush and saplings to screen anyone hiding behind them, but not far enough to prevent a horseman from forcing his way out of them …
“Bugler,” he snapped, “sound ’Column, Halt’!”
“Damnation!“ Fahlthu muttered viciously as the sweet notes of a bugle sounded and the column trotting down the bank of the ravine slowed in instant response. He slammed his right fist down on his kneecap, hard enough to startle a twitch out of the horse under him, but it was too late to change his plans now. The underbrush which had concealed his spread out troops from his enemies’ approaching scouts also prevented the quick lateral passage of orders down the length of his formation. He’d had to give his men their instructions before he sent them to their positions, and he couldn’t change them now—not without using his own bugles, which would have given away the game just as surely as what was about to happen.
And not in time to stop it, anyway.
Trianal watched his column of fours slow to a walk, then stop. His lead scouts had already been sixty or seventy yards in advance when the bugle call sounded. Now they were almost to the edge of the woods, still opening the gap, and he saw two of them turning in their saddles to look back towards the main body even as they continued trotting forwards.