Get Her Back (Demontech) (5 page)

CHAPTER SEVEN

      Three of the Bloody Axes were badly enough injured that they couldn’t maintain the pace—one of them was a litter case. Haft hated to reduce the size of his already small force, but he had to send them back. With an escort. Balta had lost enough blood that he should have returned with the other badly wounded, but he refused to go. Haft complained, but he was secretly glad that the Skraglander officer stayed, even though it meant they had to go a little slower than they had the day before. The Aralez, a healing demon that Tabib had brought in one of his spell chests, had done a good job of stopping the bleeding and beginning the healing process. Even wounded and somewhat faint of mind, Balta was still an excellent tracker should his skills be needed.

      “Lord Haft!” the voice came faintly on the westerly wind. Ahead, one of the point men was waving.

      Haft didn’t try to yell against the wind, instead he waved to the point man to let him know he’d heard. “I’ll go,” he said to Balta. “You catch up in good time.”

      Balta nodded—it was less tiring than trying to speak against the wind.

      Haft heeled his mare into a rocking-horse canter and quickly  covered the quarter mile to the point team.

      Corporal Kaplar, who had called to Haft, silently pointed at the ground.

      Although he wasn’t very good at reading sign on the trail, and the constant wind had finally erased some of the traces, Haft could see what had made the point team stop and call for him: Alyline and the Royal Lancers had, for unknown reasons, changed direction a mile and a half back. At this place they had stopped—and a large number of other riders on beasts that had three toes rather than hoofs surrounded, then closed on, them.

      “Do you see any blood?” Haft asked, peering closely at the ground. He’d wonder about the three-toed beasts later; finding out about casualties came first. He knew how to read blood on the ground to determine how many casualties there were, and even how a battle had progressed and ended.

      “No, Sir Haft,” Kaplar said. “My men haven’t seen any blood  either.” The other three in the point team also said they hadn’t seen any signs on the ground to indicate there’d been much of a fight.

      “I don’t think there was a fight, Sir Haft,” added Ember, another of the men on the point.

      Haft looked at Kaplar for confirmation. The leader of the point team nodded.

      Haft looked back at the ground. He saw the direction the hoof and toe prints went and looked after them into the distance.

      “How long?” he asked the corporal.

      Kaplar shook his head. “It’s too dry here to tell,” he said. “And the wind confuses everything. It could be hours, it could be three days. I can’t tell how long it’s been.” He paused, then added, “It’s too bad we don’t have a Borderer with us. A Borderer would certainly be able to tell.”

      The Borderers were scouts who watched over the borders of Skragland, and trailed trespassers and possible invaders. They were excellent trackers, and read sign possibly better than anyone else in the entire world.

      Haft made a face. He’d thought that with Jurnieks as their guide to the Desert Nomads’ camp they wouldn’t have any need for a tracker. But Jurnieks was worthless as a guide, and was no better as a tracker than one could expect of a sailor. He rose in his saddle and turned to face the rest of the column, which was approaching at a brisk walk—the fastest pace that Balta could stand.

      “Tabib!” he bellowed.” I want Tabib!”

      A faint reply came to him, “Tabib, yes, Sir Haft!” He could see the word being passed back to the Kondive Island mage, until he  finally saw the mage turn his donkey out of the line and trot forward.

      “Lord Haft,” Tabib said when he reached the point, touching  fingers to forehead, mouth, and chest, and bowing so deeply that Haft momentarily thought he was going to fall from his donkey. “I am honored that you have singled me out of the line to come to your side. Is there a way in which I might be of assistance?”

      Haft stared at the funny-looking little man for a brief moment, wishing that Spinner had sent Xundoe, the mage who’d joined the band in its early days when they were still in Skragland, to join his small force. Xundoe sometimes babbled, and often seemed to think more highly of himself than his rank warranted, but Haft had never—seldom, anyway—heard the sarcasm in his voice that he almost constantly heard in Tabib’s. He didn’t say anything about it, though. Instead, he waved a hand at the ground.

      “Can you divine what happened here?” he asked.

      Tabib slipped off his donkey and squatted flat-footed to examine the ground up close. He murmured softly as he brushed his fingers lightly above the prints, barely avoiding contact with them. After a couple of moments he straightened his back and looked up at Haft.

      “The three-toes, they are the prints of comitelots, cousins of the comites of the Low Desert. It is said the nomads of the High Desert use them as riding beasts.” He glanced about at the ground. “I do not imagine that a herd of wild beasts would so perfectly encircle a band of mounted and armed men, as did these.” He looked back at Haft and cocked his head questioningly.

      “Yes?” Haft gestured for Tabib to continue. When the mage didn’t, he asked, “So the High Desert Nomads surrounded Alyline and the Royal Lancers. Then what happened?”

      Tabib shrugged. “Then they went off in that direction,” he said, pointing due west.

      Haft threw his arms up. “I know that much!” he shouted,  exasperated. “What I want to know is what happened!”

      Tabib looked at the ground, looked to the west, looked back at Haft. “Sir Haft, I don’t know, but it looks like they parleyed and the nomads agreed to take the Golden Girl and her escort to their camp.”

      Haft looked at Tabib in disbelief, then realized that was exactly what had happened. There hadn’t been a fight, and they all rode off together.
Was it possible that the nomads had somehow managed to take the whole party prisoner without any fighting?
That sounded too improbable.

     Balta arrived just then, and Haft took a moment to tell him what the point men and Tabib had divined from the signs. The Bloody Axes commander didn’t dismount, but leaned forward to look at the ground. Shortly, with a grimace of pain, he straightened up.

      “I believe they’re right, Sir Haft,” he said. He looked in the  direction the party of nomads and lancers had gone. “We should follow them.”

      “My thinking exactly,” Haft said. “Lead on,” he added to Kaplar.

      “Aye aye, Sir Haft!” Kaplar said. The Bloody Axes were from a landlocked nation, so they didn’t have a nautical tradition. Still, Kaplar had adopted some of the terms used by Haft. Kaplar thrust an arm in the direction of the tracks and said to his men, “Let’s see how long it takes us to catch up with them.”

      “HOLD!” Lieutenant Guma had shouted the instant he saw the nomad chief gesture. “Do not fight, do not resist!” With the same peripheral vision that had allowed him to see the nomads getting close to his men, he had seen that they reached for the weapons of the Royal Lancers, not for their own.

      The nomad chief leaned forward in his saddle and grinned at Guma. “You are quick,” he said through his interpreter. “Few men would notice that you weren’t being attacked, and would have resisted.” His grin widened as he turned his gaze toward the Golden Girl, exposing snaggleteeth. “Your woman wants to go to our camp. So we shall take you there. But,” he looked back at Guma, his smile gone, “your weapons will be peace-bound.”

      Guma gave a surprised blink. “Why peace-bind our weapons  instead of disarming us?” he blurted.

      The nomad chief threw his head back and roared out in  laughter.

      The interpreter explained, “If we disarm you, then we have to carry your weapons. It’s easier on us if you carry them.”

      Guma shrugged. He thought there was a flaw in the nomad chief’s logic, but he wasn’t going to pursue it. Not if leaving it alone meant that he and his men were allowed to keep their weapons, even if peace-bound.

      It was a matter of mere moments for the nomads to use leather cords to bind knives to scabbards and lances to their carrying loops.

      Obviously
, Guma thought,
they’ve done this before.
That was another thought he didn’t want to pursue with the nomad chief. But it gave him hope that his men and the Golden Girl would come through this meeting alive, and be allowed to return to the refugee train unharmed.

      It took Haft and the Bloody Axes three days to reach the nomad camp; he estimated that if they hadn’t had to go slowly because of Balta’s injuries, it would have taken only two days. And he thought two days might be too long, given the reputation of the High Desert Nomads.

      But given that reputation, two days or three likely didn’t matter.

      They heard the camp before they saw it. Corporal Kaplar, still leading the point team, signaled a halt and dismounted when he heard the lowing and honking of comitelots on the wind.

      Haft turned his head and called back, “I want Jurniaks!” He heeled his mare’s flanks and she reluctantly shifted her gait to a canter. Balta also urged his mount into a canter; he’d healed a great deal during the three days since they found where the desert men had surrounded Alyline and her Royal Lancers.

      “Sir Haft,” the refugee sailor said when he reached the point  element.

      “Do you hear the animals?” Haft asked.

      “Yes, Lord, Sir Haft.” Jurniaks still didn’t know which way he should address Haft, so he decided to use both titles.

      “Do they sound like camp animals?”

      Jurniaks made a show of listening, then nodded.     “Yes, Lord, they sound like the animals in the camp sounded when I was held captive.”

      He looked all around. “I don’t see any outposts, no sentries. Why do you think that is?”

      Jurniaks swallowed to wet his suddenly dry throat before saying, “Because they are too well hidden for you to see them? Or maybe,” he went on hastily, “it’s because they feel so secure on their wasteland that they don’t need lookouts.”

      “That makes sense,” Balta said. “There weren’t any sentries around their camp when you escaped, were there?”

      “No, Sir. None that I saw.” Here, Jurniaks was on firmer ground as to how to address these people. He knew that Balta was an officer, and officers are addressed as “Sir.”

      Balta nodded at Jurniaks’ confirmation of what he thought, then shook his head at the carelessness of a warrior people who didn’t bother with sentries around their camps.

      “That means we can just ride right in?” Haft asked rhetorically.

      “In theory,” Balta said. But he sounded like he didn’t think the theory was very sound.

      Haft twisted around to look at the column strung out to his rear.

      “Bring in the flankers, and tighten the column,” he ordered. “If we get a hard reception when we enter the camp, I want enough axes up close to make a real difference when we fight.”

      They went forward another fifty yards and the camp spread out before them in a shallow hollow that hadn’t been hinted at in the uniformly dull landscape. Haft estimated the camp to be one mile in circumference. They saw thin tendrils of smoke rising from fires.