Thieves of Islar: Book One of The Heirs of Bormeer (21 page)

J
aeron focused on slow, silent breathing as he swept his eyes back and forth across the road. In his hidden position, he could just barely make out the forms of his family, his guild. Unbidden, he thought again about the risks to his team or to the wagon guards. Would all the guards be working for Lord Witaasen? Would they give up as easily as Chazd thought they would?

He understood that not every situation could be controlled. Not every contingency could be foreseen. That understanding did not prevent Jaeron from feeling like he was taking reckless chances.

“Too late now,” he mouthed a silent whisper as he heard the first
clip-clop
of horse hooves on the wagon road.

The shipment was early by the position of the moons, but within their planning window. Jaeron shifted his weight and peered through the branches of the mountain laurel. The sky was clear and both moons bright. Would that make things easier or more difficult? The wagon traveled without lanterns, keeping their night vision intact. The wagon driver or head guard was either smart or experienced.
Perhaps both.

As the wagon came into view, Jaeron counted the guards. It confirmed the information from deLespan and the observations his brother had made. There were two lead guards on horseback, four walking next to the wagon, and one seated next to the driver. And there was a trailing horseman following the wagon.
Eight in total. No, nine.
A figure skulked in the shadows at the road’s edge, staying alongside the trailing rider.

Jaeron frowned but he knew the best way to handle the additional guard. He tapped Avrilla on the arm and pointed out the scout. She hunched forward, scanning the road. Then she nodded and moved off silently through the trees. Avrilla’s role in the night’s action was now changed. Jaeron hoped her absence did not adversely impact the plan.

Jaeron signaled the guild’s two new recruits, Bolvar and Petra, to begin the attack. The pair let fly with stones from their slings. Their aim was true despite the dim light and the smooth stones struck both lead horses in the hindquarters.

Both animals kicked and reared. One guard was thrown to the ground and the horses bolted down the road, dirt and mud flying from their hooves. At the sound of the startled whinnies, Chazd fired the heavy crossbow the thieves had assembled that afternoon. The bolt was blunted with heavy padding over a thick lead tip. His brother’s skills overcame the weapon’s poor flying qualities as the heavy missile hit the wagon guard, knocking him off the bench and onto the dirt on the far side of the road. Jaeron prayed it had not been a killing blow. He also silently thanked Ardo for fronting them the money for the device.

The remaining guards were reacting by this time, moving to the side of the wagon from which the attacks came. The rider in the rear began calling out commands. They were drawing weapons, short thick swords that were the Bormeeran army standard. Jaeron shook his head, but he was not shocked. He had not expected to rout the guard force with the initial attack, but he had hoped that they might be that lucky. Now it was going to be a fight. Jaeron completed a fervent prayer to Teichmar that there were no deaths on either side and sprang from his hiding place, sword in hand.

~

Warren deLincaro had lived most of his forty years as a soldier,though his father would have certainly disapproved of his recent eighteen years work as a mercenary. The deLincar
o’
s before him had been footmen in the Royal First Army and his father had risen through the ranks to the status of captain before being killed at the Battle of Telas Gorge. Warren changed his career path at that point, finishing out his current tour of duty by keeping as low a profile as possible. He stayed out of trouble, and more importantly stayed out of the focus of attention of any of his superiors. He learned tactics but concentrated on the ones that would most enable him to survive, if not win, every battle.

Warren considered himself a fortunate man to have survived in his chosen profession as long as he had. But he gave himself due credit as well. He had a strong sword arm, a battle presence that commanded respect, and a talent for observation that allowed him to quickly assess and react to battlefield conditions. That was why he was angry with himself that he had not seen this ambush before it was well underway.

His men were responding according to their training. One was down, perhaps permanently. The lead guards would get their mounts under control shortly. The others were taking defensive positions on the roadside.

“Taylor!” Warren shouted. “Get that wagon out of here!”

“Seventeen hells,” he swore to himself. Every driver should know that the most important thing was the silver. But this fool still pulled up his reins and stopped the wagon team when the guard next to him had been knocked off the seat. Warren spurred his horse, urging it into a run to close the distance to the fight ahead. Three bandits were emerging from the brush on the right-hand side of the road. Two others came from the left, attempting to flank his men around the front and rear of the wagon. He heard a repetition of the telltale
thwick
of a crossbow and watched as another of his men crumpled heavily to the ground clutching his leg. The thieves were resourceful, but that tactic was not going to work much longer. His men were now engaged in close-quarter melee.

The crossbow problem would be taken care of shortly in any case. Warren had his own archer who was experienced enough to act on his own without needing orders from him. He charged into the nearest fray and wheeled his horse around to bring his sword to bear. He swung well, and was surprised when the metal rang out with a clean parry. The thief appeared young, but surprisingly well trained. He had deflected Warren’s sword over his left shoulder, stepped in low, and used his counter-swing to score a crippling blow to the guard he had originally been fighting.

The youth now spun to face him, falling smoothly into a ‘water and stone’ stance. Warren recognized the Pevaran training. He also realized that the young man was relying on techniques designed for a grounded opponent, not one on horseback. Warren countered with a feint while giving his warhorse a silent command to rise up for a kicking attack. The bandit ducked, rolling right and forward under the horse and into the middle of the road. The move brought him to a position where he got a clear view of the silver wagon gathering speed away from the combat. The lad turned his attention back to Warren but whistled a clear, sharp signal which clearly expected some response.

The swordsman is the leader. If I take him out, I can end this fight quickly.

Warren spun his horse around again and easily parried the youth’s slicing ‘hawk wing’ strike. The pair moved, blades and shield ringing out the deadly dance. Warren steadily gained the upper hand as he used his mount to full advantage and the horse placed a grazing blow against the thief’s offhand shoulder.

Warren was so focused on the fight in front of him that he nearly missed seeing the sudden movement on his right flank. He chanced a quick glance to assess the new arrival and relaxed when he recognized the dark leathers and familiar black sword. It was his Pevaran lookout. The hidden crossbowman must have been taken care of and Warren smiled with the knowledge that the fight was about to get much shorter.

He shifted his weight to bring his shield into position for a heavy attack. As he moved his saddle gave way beneath him. Suddenly Warren found himself falling backward, felt hands pulling him down. Impact with the dirt knocked the air from his lungs. He stared up at a pair of swords pointing at his chest. One belonged to the young thief, but the other was the shadow colored blade belonging to his own scout.

~

“Surrender, we beg you!” Jaeron said, panting out the words. “We do not wish to spill further blood this night.” He was winded and sweating. Had his sister’s magic not worked on the strangely garbed guard, he may have been at the wrong end of a blade himself tonight.

“Hah!” the sudden exclamation put emphasis on Jaeron’s command.

Danine had used the distraction to clip her opponent across the temple with the flat of her axe. When the man collapsed and the others saw their commander on the ground at the mercy of his personal guard, their will failed. As one they dropped their weapons and held up their hands.

Jaeron called to the roadside, “Bring the ropes and bind them. And tend their wounded. Let’s wrap this up! And someone chase down the wagon.”

The guild responded with satisfying efficiency. Chazd came forward with the supply of ropes and, working with Sten and Petra, bound and hobbled the mobile guards. Bolvar moved from one downed guard to the next, checking for breath and pulse and treating obvious injuries. Danine mounted the guard leader’s horse bareback and galloped off down the road.

Jaeron sensed the presence of his sister at his side. While she stood guard over the man on the ground, he took a moment to assess the other man standing next to them. Behind a loosely wrapped scarf and heavy cowl, Jaeron could not see much of the man’s features. He got a sense of a rugged aquiline nose and a piercing gaze focused solely on his sister. The man’s attire was like nothing Jaeron had ever seen. He looked more the part of a thief than his own guild did.

But it was the strange man’s sword and the manner in which he held it that most caught Jaeron’s attention. The blade was non-reflective black and nearly invisible in the moonlight. Curious, but Jaeron had heard of forging techniques and other treatments that could accomplish such a finish. No, Jaeron was most interested in the fact that the sword was a Pevaran design and the wielder was Pevaran trained.

Jaeron’s own sword was of Pevaran make, but it was old and had been refurbished locally. Jaeron knew it was probably one of the high production blades made for the general Pevaran footman. This man’s weapon was a work of master craftsmanship. Jaeron could see the quality in the hilt and guard, the detailed carving, and careful silk braid wrapping. The blade itself was spine straight and had the gently curved edge that made the Pevaran design so strong and light.

“Jaeron?” Avrilla asked.

He tore his eyes from the sword and looked at his sister.

“We are about done here, but what do I do with him?”

Chazd approached with ropes in hand, but had not tried to bind the man.

“I think he should return to Islar with the rest of these men and make sure they come to no further harm.”

“You’re kidding!” Chazd balked, nearly dropping the ropes. “That sword… that outfit–”

“Will remain his,” Jaeron interrupted him.

“Avrilla, can you ask him to be their escort?”

His sister nodded. She took the stranger’s arm and led him away, quietly talking to him away from the rest of the guild.

“Put the wounded on horses. The rest will walk back to Islar. I will take the wagon.”

Jaeron sheathed his sword, embarrassed by his sudden desire for the master blade.
Teichmar will provide.
He prayed and asked forgiveness for his private temptation and envy.

“Let’s get moving!” he called out. “We have an appointment to keep.”

G
uildmaster Ortelli’s men met Jaeron and his company at the ford across the Miller’s Kill, a small tributary of the Targu Mares River that flowed to Islar from the northwest. The men arrived on a long, flat-bottomed boat. One waded to the shore and signaled them with a blue-glass lantern. Jaeron halted the wagon team and waited for their approach. They were noiseless as they moved in to assess the deAltos and their guildmates.

Jaeron jumped down from the driver’s seat of the wagon. “We’re all set and I have someone tailing behind us to make sure we haven’t been followed.”

The two men merely looked at him and then moved toward the back of the wagon. Jaeron followed them and nodded to his sister when he came within her sight. Avrilla opened the wagon’s rear door and then moved out of the way to join the rest of Henri’s Hands. One of the strangers moved past her and used the lantern to shine light into the wagon’s interior. He remained silent, but Jaeron could tell that he was counting the locked chests resting on the wagon’s wooden floor.

Jaeron looked at his sister and shrugged. He was not about to make any mistakes on this job now, but they did not know that. He turned to his group that had held back on the road.

“Line up,” he called quietly. “Let’s get this thing unloaded.”

At that he brushed past the man with the lantern and jumped up into the wagon to begin the task of pushing each chest to the edge of the cart and into the waiting hands of a pair of thieves below.
If they want to take the time to count the chests, they can do it on their boat.

It turned out that the count of the chests was twenty-four, including the one that the deAltos were keeping as their payment for the job. Exactly as Chazd reported. Shortly the rest were in the care of Ortelli’s hirelings and loaded on board the shallow boat from the center outward to the prow and stern. Each chest weighed nearly sixty pounds, which Chazd had estimated at fifty pounds of silver, a pound for the hasp and lock, perhaps a pound of packing materials, and eight pounds of solid walnut.

Jaeron had not allowed Chazd to pick any of the locks. He did not expect that the silver mine company would have trapped all two dozen of them, but any one of them could be. They had not asked deLespan about that. The man might have told them without being asked, but Jaeron noted to himself that it was another planning mistake he did not want to repeat in the future.

The other reason that he had not allowed his brother to open any of the chests was that he did not want the temptation of the mint fresh silver on the minds of any of his new guild members. He wanted to be safely holed up back in the city before anyone set eyes on the bars inside. He also wanted no questions of missing bars coming from Ortelli.

Once all the chests were on board, Ortelli’s crew climbed into their boat and unpacked two long wooden poles which they used to push away from the shore and angle the boat downstream. Jaeron watched them go. A minute or so into their journey they extinguished their lamp and were lost from sight.

“Friendly lot, that,” Chazd was now at his side.

“Hmmn. Not so much, brother,” Jaeron said.

He turned to look back at his guildmates, all watching him. He saw expectation in their faces. But they were tiring as well. It had been a long night and the post battle adrenalin had long past.

“Let’s get rid of this wagon and get back to Islar,” he said, spurring them into motion once again.

~

Avrilla climbed back up into the driver’s seat of the wagon, but kept looking back around the vehicle to see what everyone was doing. She thought about calling out to Jaeron but chewed her lip in silence.

We need to go. Had her spell worn off?
She did not have a sense of how long her influence lasted over the people to whom she gave suggestions. She had control of the farmer for days, but she had felt more of a resistance in the stealthy guard. She just did not know.

If the guards were free, they might be slowly making their way back to the city with their wounded. That would give their guild two hours to hide the silver, free the wagon team, and run the coastline back into Islar lest they arrive to a fully alerted city watch. Conversely, they could have tried to regroup, backtracked to the site of the ambush, and be searching for the thieves that stole their charge.

The only risk remaining was the return trip with the wagon and team of horses. The wagon was too conspicuous. They would be recognized by anyone who knew the silver trade. Despite the care they had taken, Avrilla was sure that the guards were probably free of their bonds by now.

“Mount up or get in the wagon,” Jaeron was still giving instructions as he climbed into the seat next to her. “Let’s go.”

Avrilla breathed a sigh of relief and let her brother take the reins. She could read the tension in Jaeron as he pondered the remaining bits of the night’s plan. She tried to calm herself, hoping that her brother would take notice and relax. Leaning her head back onto the hard wagon seat, she watched the night stars cycle through a dance of hide-and-seek behind the blackness of the overhanging limbs and leaves.

Jaeron seemed content to sit in silence with her and after fifteen or twenty minutes she nearly nodded off. The sound of a horse nearing the wagon caught her attention and she looked to her left, making out the form of Danine on the back of the guard captain’s destrier. She rode the war mount like she belonged on it, guiding the horse easily into a high step walk that kept an even pace with the draft horses. Her musing was broken when she noticed that Danine was staring right back at her.

“What is it, deAlto?” Danine asked, edging the stallion closer so that they could converse without raising their voices.

“You ride well, Danine,” Avrilla realized that was not all she was thinking about, but it was part of it. The truth was she could not figure out why the other woman was so easily able to put her off kilter.

Danine snorted in reply, her ponytail snapping in the air in reaction to the sudden movement.

“You followed Jaeron’s instructions…” Avrilla said more than she had intended, ignoring the sudden odd look from her brother.

“Ha!” Danine’s laugh exploded, and then she looked around seriously and quieted herself.

“You were worried I was going to kill someone.”

Avrilla nodded, then sensing that Danine had not seen the small movement she said, “Yes, I guess I was.”

“Just because I told you that killing is necessary, it doesn’t mean it’s always necessary,” Danine paused, patting her horse then continued. “I think that tonight we were lucky.”

“Truly,” Avrilla changed the subject aware of her brother’s discomfort. “Where did you learn to ride?”

Danine’s face tensed a bit, then relaxed as she shrugged off whatever thoughts had initially claimed her.

“I was raised with horses. My father bred them for our tribe. I rode nearly before I could walk, and probably rode more than walked any given day until… until the day we were enslaved and forced to walk to Islar.”

Even in the dim light, Avrilla could see her expression and she realized it was the first time that she had ever seen the other woman sad.

“I think that riding is one of my only good memories,” and so saying Danine spurred her horse forward, outpacing the wagon and draft animals and any further questions.

The more Avrilla interacted with the Hinterland woman, the less she understood about her. She expected a following conversation from Jaeron once Danine was out of earshot, but her brother remained quiet. She took a breath, enjoying the stillness outside of the steady clip-clop of the draft team and the peeps and buzzing noises of the low wetlands around her. She had a sudden notion that Chazd could not have kept silent.

The thought of her brother made her turn around to look for him. At first she could barely make him out, riding in the saddle behind Bolvar on one of the other captured horses. Then their company broke from under the trees as the wagon began a gradual climb back into farming country.

Jaeron drew the wagon to a halt and the guild moved into action once more. Avrilla hopped down from her seat and took a shovel from Sten. He handed another to Petra and a pickaxe to Danine. She motioned for them to follow.

Avrilla led the group to the ruins of a rock wall where they cleared a small space of ground and began to dig. They did not need a deep hole, but she knew that Jaeron wanted to make it difficult to recover the chest. The four thieves worked steadily until Avrilla heard the sound of the wagon rolling away.
There goes Chazd.

Moments later, Jaeron and Bolvar appeared, carrying the heavy chest between them. With all of them working, the guild finished burying the chest in minutes. Jaeron untied the bundle that was slung over his back and began laying out a ground cloth and bedroll. Once that was done, he came over to inspect her work.

“Looks good,” he said. “You better get back to the city and make sure you are all seen early in the morning. We will regroup back at the cellar in two days.”

There were nods all around. If any of the Hands were uncomfortable with the instruction, they did not show it. Avrilla leaned in to give her brother a quick hug.

“Good night, Jaeron. Be careful out here.”

She led the group away. From here they had a half hour run to the city. The night was far from over.

~

The village of Peakinaw was the center of a small farming community surrounded by almost one-hundred and fifty acres of wheat and rye fields. The village was no more than sixteen buildings and a moderately sized graveyard that decorated the sloping hill behind the village church. Chazd maintained a slow pace as he walked the draft team down the road. Whether it was just fortune or clever planning on Jaero
n’
s part, Chazd did not know, but the team made little noise on the dirt and pebble track. He headed toward the smithy, an open-air building that was the furthest removed from the rest of the town on the villag
e’
s western edge.

He stopped the horses and looked around, still not seeing any movement. He had learned over the past weeks that farmers held to a different schedule than he had grown used to in the city. He was not sure how close he was to the time the early risers started their day. Chazd got down from the wagon and guided the horses to the water trough outside the blacksmith’s workshop. With any luck, they would stay there until someone found them in the morning.

Chazd turned away from the town and jogged north through the fields. Though they had a head start, he hoped to catch up with Avrilla and the rest of their guild on the coastline. Chazd kept a fast pace, alternating between a jog and a fast walk. He had to slow down when he cleared the edge of the fields and was under the cover of the forest. The footing was trickier and it was hard to see.

The woodland separated Peakinaw’s farming community from the stony beaches of South Claw Bay. It was a narrow strip and Chazd kept a good pace, but by the time he caught sight of Islar, Sira was settling behind the Guradilup mountains. Bright torches were burning in the city wall towers and along the battlements and a double guard manned the Southern Gate. Chazd considered making his way around the city and using the hidden climb to get back inside, but that would waste another hour. The sun would be rising by then.

Without a better idea, Chazd returned to the bay, moving away from Islar until he found an area of sandy dunes and tall grass. He crushed down a patch of grasses in a widening circle, bending the stalks over close to the ground. After a few circuits, they remained mostly flat giving him a place to spread his cloak. Chazd lay down and fell asleep.

The shrill cries of seagulls woke him just in time to enjoy a magnificent sunrise that broke over the peninsula of land on the other side of the lower bay. Chazd yawned and stretched and scratched at the inevitable sand fleas that had taken the opportunity to feast on him while he slept.

He stood, brushed himself off, and shook out his cloak. He still needed to get back into the city, but Chazd thought that might be easier now with the foot traffic from the farms now underway. He took a westerly course back toward the South Road rather than heading for Islar straight away. He moved through farmlands, staying at the edges of fields and avoiding horse farms and pastureland as much as he could.

Finally, he made for a thin, dirt track that wound between several farms and emerged on the main road to the city. Chazd was pleased to find his timing as lucky as ever. Two carts of vegetables were just passing, followed by a drove of swine being coaxed with the temptation of cabbage and thin switches. Chazd moved quickly to follow the carts, happy not to have to walk through pig shite all the way back to the city gates.