06 - Rule of Thieves (2 page)

But then it was only a year since the province was at war with its Skeltai neighbors. Maybe that was reason enough for them to keep an eye out for people bearing those physical markers. It didn’t have to be about me. As far as I knew, the Skeltai and the province were at peace now, but maybe something had happened while I was away to change that situation.

Either way, it was as well I was not now easily recognized as one of distant Skeltai ancestry.

I followed the wide bridge spanning the lake from city walls to shore. The capital city stood on an island, a sufficient distance from the mainland that this was the only convenient path to leave by. The bridge was usually crowded with wagons and foot travelers, but it was empty now and silent but for the echo of my steps and the sounds of the lake lapping against the pilings.

Upon reaching shore, I had an all-night walk ahead of me. But I didn’t mind the long dusty road. I felt lighter with every mile because each step brought me closer to home.

____________________

Dimmingwood was home to me in a way Selbius could never be. They were only a night and a half day apart for one traveling by foot. But the city was full and noisy and foul-smelling, a place where I could never let down my guard.

As I set foot beneath the tree shadows the next day, it seemed to me the very air here was different. Clean and clear and flavored with the sharp scent of pine and elder. The glittering sun was at midpoint in the sky when I left the road and plunged into the dappled shade of the forest.

Birds warbled in the trees, their call as familiar to me as the welcome of old friends. The treetops rustled and swayed lazily in the breeze. I had been away a long time and felt a brief sense of disorientation. But I quickly found my bearings, and Dimmingwood spread before me, a map of rocks and trees I knew by heart. It was tempting to reacquaint myself with old haunts. But I had come here for a specific purpose and mustn’t let myself be distracted.

Over the next day, I traveled deep into the heart of the forest, making for Red Rock Cave and falls. There wouldn’t be any outlaws there now. The Praetor had long since discovered the old hideout and driven the Dimmingwood outlaws to seek new places of concealment. But I was uncertain where their current base would be, and old meeting grounds were a likely place to dig up their trail.

Traveling light, I hunted for what food I needed, able at last to remove my bow from its coarse wrappings and expose it to the light of day. It glowed warmly across my back, its whispers of approval tickling my mind. I wasn’t the only one pleased to be back where we belonged.

My first night in the forest, I climbed a thick elder tree and relearned the art of sleeping wedged between the branches. It felt oddly unfamiliar to me, and I half expected to fall out of my lofty perch during the night. I had been away from all this too long.

My dreams were troubled visions of fire and death that receded from memory at dawn’s first light. I told myself as I breakfasted on a handful of berries that these were probably only memories of the destruction of Swiftsfell. My newly found grandmother, Myria, had been killed there during a dragon’s attack on the magicker village several months ago. I had avenged her death and destroyed the dragon, but sometimes the event still haunted my dreams.

I fingered the dragon scale charm worn on a chain around my neck, a gift from Myria before her death. The scale augmented my natural magic, once all but burnt out but now restored as long as I wore the charm.

I tapped into the magic now and cast a searching net around me, seeking out other presences. I felt neither friends nor strangers nearby. But I hadn’t really expected to find anyone in this isolated part of the forest.

I set out to cover as much distance as possible that day, crossing a shallow stream and following it for miles. As I traveled, I gradually became aware of a foreign scent on the breeze—smoke. Where there was smoke, there were usually people. Yet I continued to sense no living presence but the wildlife of the woods.

Curious, I followed my nose. The burning smell grew stronger until it led to a small clearing. There the view before me gave an unsettling feeling of stepping back into the past. I had seen this scene before. A seemingly abandoned woods holding, its cottage and outbuildings standing silent. Doors were ajar. Curtains in the open windows flapped in the breeze. But the yard was empty. Neither people nor livestock stirred even though it was an hour when the farmer and his family should be busy with their chores. Instead of feeling peaceful, it all made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. It evoked memories of a dark time more than a year past when Skeltai raiders used to cross our borders and snatch woods folk away never to be seen again.

Curls of black smoke rose, not from the house but from behind it. Cautiously, I circled to the back of the yard, sticking close to the shelter of the trees. The smell grew sharper, stronger, and fouler than the innocent scent that would have been created by smoldering kindling or even by the farmer burning refuse.

I saw it now. A blackened pile of charred corpses, maybe as many as a dozen of them.

Some part of me must have expected it, as I was unsurprised. Gripping my bow in readiness and casting another wary glance around the perimeter, I crossed the yard to approach the bodies.

The flames were mostly spent now, but they had been burning long enough to render the corpses unrecognizable. It was only remaining fragments of their rough garments and, here and there, the broken shaft of a spear or the head of an axe that identified them. These were no woods folk but Skeltai raiders. I had faced them enough times in the last skirmishes to know.

I backed away from the smoldering heap. There was something wrong with this scene. Skeltai raids were often deadly for woods folk but this time the attackers had been the victims. It couldn’t have been a farmer and his family that fended them off.

But who else in these parts was capable of such defense? I wasn’t sure I wanted to meet them. Not alone, anyway.

I had a sudden impatience to be away from here. It was growing more important by the moment that I find my outlaw companions and learn what had been happening during my absence from the province. Clearly, we had bigger troubles to worry about than the unknown enemy bent on my personal destruction.

If returning to Dimmingwood felt like coming home, revisiting Red Rock camp was like stepping into my own yard. This was where I had spent half my childhood, both in the clearing near the pool and in the red cave with the roaring waterfall tumbling down its side. The place looked abandoned now. But if I had been drawn back to it, others might be as well. If they ventured here occasionally, they would have left some sign of fresh activity.

Failing to find anything in the clearing, I entered the cave itself. The dim, red-walled interior brought back a rush of memories as I was enveloped in the shadows. Here it was that Brig had brought me for safety during that long ago day when I had first encountered the outlaws. Out in the sunlit clearing behind me, I had caught my first sight of the infamous brigand captain, Rideon, the Red Hand.

Once, Rideon had seemed a hero to me. He had even given me my name when I could not remember the one I had been born with. More recently, he had become an enemy and threatened my life. Yet my feelings toward him would always be dominated by my childhood view, when he had been all that I dreamed of becoming myself one day. Remembering that he had been dangling from the end of a rope when last I saw him gave me a sense that a shadow had fallen over the old life.

Shaking away the disturbing thought, I ducked into the small area where I used to sleep. The ceiling was lower than I remembered. Here I used to stretch a hand through the opening in the rock and feel the cool splash of the falls on hot summer nights. Here I had once hid the brooch my mother gave me inside a hidden niche in the wall.

I slipped a hand into the stone niche now. Of course it was empty. I wore the brooch pinned to my cloak and had long since emptied the hiding place of any other valuables.

I continued my inspection of the caverns, but nowhere did I find any indication of recent disturbance. If outlaws had been here, they had left no evidence of their visit.

Exiting the cave, I decided to put Red Rock behind me and try Boulder’s Cradle next. It would be another abandoned place, but I had to start somewhere.

I had just left the roar of the falls in the distance when I felt it. The familiar tingling sense warning me of another presence. Someone was watching me. Two someones, in fact.

Nearby, a bird call split the silence of the woods. I knew that signal, long used by the forest outlaws. One of my hidden observers was telling his partner to hold off and let him attack first. The branches of an elder tree shivered overhead, and knowing what was coming, I instinctively rolled aside in time to avoid the dark shape dropping down from above. Without me in the expected place to break her fall, the girl landed hard in a crouched position. Not fazed for long, she faced me with a dagger ready in her hand.

I met her hard gaze with the point of an arrow, hastily nocked and aimed between her eyes.

“There’s no need for this.” I raised my voice for the benefit of her partner. Wherever he was, I imagined he had an arrow similarly trained on me. “I’m one of you,” I said. “I’ve been away awhile, but I’ve come back and am looking for Dradac. I know he took the band over after Rideon.”

The female outlaw looked at me with suspicion. She was young, maybe only a little older than me, with sandy-blond hair. Streaks of dark mud camouflaged her clothing and skin. I didn’t know her, so she must be a newer recruit.

“How do we know you’re not working with the Praetor’s Fists? Or with the barbarian raiders?”

“Because if I was, I’d have killed you by now. If you doubt me, take me to the new camp where there’ll be many to vouch for me.”

“That won’t be needed. I know who you are.” A second outlaw interrupted her, a tall, wide-shouldered man emerging from his hiding place in the bushes. “We used to call you the Hound, but you looked different back then. Skinnier and silver-haired. You’ve grown up.”

“And found it necessary to disguise my appearance,” I explained. “You’re Marik, aren’t you?”

I didn’t know him well but vaguely recognized him as a thief who used to stay up at Mole Hill in the old days when our band was divided.

“That I am, and this here’s Fallon.” He introduced the girl. “We can take you to Dradac, like you ask. But if he says you’re not a friend of ours anymore, of course you realize we’ll have to slit your throat.”

“Understandable,” I agreed.

“And there’ll be other precautions. You’ve been away a long time. A lot can change in a year.”

“You mean I could be the Praetor’s creature now and prepared to sell out my friends to gain his favor,” I said.

He had a point. My allegiances these days were anybody’s guess. Even I barely knew them anymore. The Dimmingwood outlaws hadn’t survived all these years by being incautious.

I surrendered my weapons to the scowling blond girl and allowed myself to be blindfolded and led away.

Dead Man’s Fall was a good choice of location for the new camp. It overhung a swift stream where fresh water would always be on hand, and the outcropping of big rocks offered a little protection from the elements. It wasn’t as cozy as the caves of Red Rock or Boulder’s Cradle, but at least the outlaws had dug out shelters beneath the largest boulders and extended the fronts with pine-bough screens.

I was glad my escorts removed my blindfold when we overlooked the creek in its ravine, because it took careful maneuvering to ascend the steep incline to the rocks below. I followed the others’ leads, leaping from one sturdy foothold to the next and occasionally catching one of the leaning trees growing out of the hillside to steady myself.

I caught sight of Dradac seated nearby on a fallen log, where he was busily whittling at something with a belt knife. I felt an unexpected tug in my chest. If I needed any confirmation that I’d been homesick over the past year, this was it. The redheaded giant had been one of the first outlaws to befriend me when I came to live in the forest many years ago. Next to Brig, and later Terrac, Dradac had known me better than anyone.

Marik called out to him as we approached. When Dradac looked up to see me, surprise crossed his face, swiftly followed by a broad grin. He ran to meet us. I briefly thought he meant to lift me off the ground in a hug. It wouldn’t be hard to do since he stood a couple of feet taller than ordinary people. But perhaps remembering at the last moment that I wasn’t a small child anymore, he merely rested a welcoming hand on my shoulder instead.

“So you’ve come back to us, have you, Little Dog?” he asked warmly. “I thought your travels out in the big world might make Dimmingwood too small to hold you anymore.”

“I saw nothing from the provincial border to the coast to compare with home,” I said, meaning it. “Besides, I had commitments to bring me back.”

That was dangerously close to mentioning the Praetor, whose service I had been pressed into a year ago, so I changed the subject quickly. “I see Dead Man’s Fall is the new Red Rock,” I said, looking around me.

“So it has been since you left,” Dradac answered. “Would you like me to show you around? There’s a few folk here who’ll be glad to see you. Javen, Ada, and others speak of you often.”

“First, you might have to reassure this pair that I’m trustworthy.” I jerked my head toward my escorts hovering nearby. “I introduced myself real polite when they jumped me, but I have a feeling the girl still wants to stick a knife in me.”

“Nah, Fallon looks that way all the time,” he reassured me. “It’s only when she’s smiling you’ve got to watch yourself.”

At his nod, Marik and Fallon faded into the trees, the blond girl shooting me one last warning scowl before disappearing.

“Our little band of criminal outcasts has shrunk since Rideon’s death,” said Dradac as he walked me around the camp. “A few newcomers like Fallon have taken the place of some who left, but our numbers aren’t what they used to be.”