Honoured Enemy

• Chapter Two •

Discovery

ICY RAIN LASHED DOWN.

Carefully, silently, Dennis Hartraft slipped through the column of weary troops. In the early morning down-pours, his men crouched motionless, many with arrows nocked to their bows. In their dirty grey cloaks they were one with the forest. Even so, he could sense their tension; something was wrong. Their eyes followed him as he darted from tree to tree, staying low. During the night the snow had changing to a mix of sleet and icy rain. It had made the night march a misery, but some inner sense had compelled Dennis to push on, a decision that Gregory and Tinuva had fully endorsed. Swinging east of Mad Wayne’s Fort, which had fallen to the Tsurani the previous spring, they followed a path little more than a game trail back to Brendan’s Stockade, approaching from the north-east.

They were less than a quarter of a mile from Brendan’s when Alwin Barry, leading the advance squad, ordered a halt. A keen anticipation of downing pints of hot buttered mead and cold ale in a cosy tavern at the fort, instantly gave way to a grim foreboding.

Raised in these woods, Hartraft knew them intuitively. More than once that intuition had kept him alive, where sound logic would have got him killed.

Jurgen had taught him long ago truly to listen to the rhythm of the ancient woods, to be completely still, so quiet that eventually you became one with the forest and could sense the beating of its heart. That sense told him to be ready for the worst.

Jurgen … He pushed the thought away as he passed the head of the column and cautiously followed the tracks of the advance squad. Looking over his shoulder he saw Gregory stealthily moving opposite him on the trail to his right.

The two pressed forward as the rain began to let up.

Dennis heard the chatter of a squirrel, looked up and caught a glimpse of Alwin, crouched behind a fallen tree just back from the top of a low rise. He made for him, crawling the last fifty feet to stay concealed from whatever might be on the other side of the ridge.

Alwin didn’t talk, he simply pointed to Dennis, then pointed with two fingers to his own eyes and gestured towards the top of the rise, the hand signal for Dennis to go forward and see for himself.

Dennis nodded, crawling under the fallen tree and followed Alwin’s track on the slushy ground, trying to ignore the icy dampness seeping through his clothing.

As he moved slowly, he suddenly became aware of the scent of smoke hanging heavy in the air. It had been masked by the rain. On a clear day, he would have smelled it a half-mile farther back. There was more than wood scent to it, something else – cooking meat, perhaps?

He reached the crest, picking a spot between two boulders, crawled up between them, then cautiously raised his head.

Smoke concealed most of the clearing. The smoke was thick, clinging to the ground, and there was far too much of it to have come only from morning cooking fires. He knew what it meant even before an errant breeze blew the smoke away for a moment. The entire clearing, several hundred yards across, was revealed. In the centre, on top of a low ridge, Brendan’s Stockade was nothing but a flame-scorched, still-smouldering ruin. With a cold chill he realized that the scent of cooking meat was the stench of burned bodies.

What had happened?

His eyes darted back and forth, trying to soak up information, to evaluate if there was an immediate threat to his men, to see if they had just walked into a trap.

Nothing moved on the far ridge.

The wooden stockade had been breached at the gate with a battering ram mounted on rough wooden wheels. Scaling ladders leaned drunkenly against the wall to either side of the gate.

The moat had never been much, really nothing more than a ditch full of water that stank in the summer and froze over in the winter. He could see where the ice had been broken and had yet to refreeze. The fort must have been attacked late yesterday evening or during the night.

The open slopes around the fort were carpeted with Tsurani dead, perhaps a hundred or more. He stared at them for a moment. Curiously, many were lying facing downslope, as if killed while running away – and Dennis knew the Tsurani never ran away; a knot of them were clustered in the south-west corner of the clearing, piled on top of each other. Obviously they had made a last stand there, but against whom? Had the garrison been strong enough to sally forth and attack the Tsurani downhill, the walls and gates would still be standing and Hartraft’s Marauders would be inside at this very moment eating a warm meal.

If Brendan’s Stockade had fallen, where were the Tsurani? Dennis had been fighting them for the entire war, and they never left their dead to rot unless killed to the last man. Either way, the winners should now be putting out the fires and repairing the gate, for either side would hold this stockade once taken.

Nothing moved. It was a stockade of the dead.

‘There’s nothing right in this.’

Gregory had slipped up so silently that his whispered voice gave Dennis a start. Damn him, he enjoyed doing that, sneaking up and thus showing his skill, but Dennis didn’t let his flash of anger show.

‘Brendan and his lads are finished,’ Gregory whispered, ‘but so are the Tsurani.’

Dennis said nothing. In spite of the snow vultures were already circling in. A mile or more back he had noticed an absence of crows and ravens in the forest – inactive at night, they were usually noisy and busy first thing in the morning – now he knew where they were … enjoying a feast. A vulture dropped down inside the smoking ruins of the fort and did not come back out, yet another indicator that no one was left alive inside.

Could it be that the Tsurani had retreated at his approach?

No. If there were enough of them to take Brendan, they would stay and make a fight of it. The fall of this stockade, along with the Tsurani holding Mad Wayne’s to the north-west, made a hole twenty miles wide in the picket chain that covered the northern front. Why take this crucial point only to abandon it?

Ambush?

He looked back over his shoulder. Gregory was carefully looking about as well, and Dennis realized that the Natalese scout had been scanning the woods to either side, looking for any indicators that a trap was closing in.

Nothing. The crows and ravens were all down in the clearing, feasting, so there was none of their noisy cackling in the forest. The other sounds were normal: the ice-covered trees creaking in the breeze, the tinkling sound of now-light rain, the calls of other birds, and nothing else.

There was no ambush: it would already have been sprung.

Their eyes met and both had reached the same conclusion.

‘Dark Brothers,’ Dennis whispered.

Gregory nodded an agreement. ‘Unless the last Tsurani and the last Kingdom soldier conspired to kill one another at the same moment, that’s my guess.’

What he saw started to fit together. A Tsurani force had besieged the fort. Ringing the edge of the clearing he could see where the snow had been trampled down, and the torn remains of a dozen of their tents littered the ground, bits of canvas sticking out of the icy slush. Their besieging camp was at the edge of the forest less than a hundred yards away. Cooking pots still hung over cold fire-pits, and a battle pennant leaned against a half-collapsed tent covered with ice. He could even make out the spot where they had forged together their rough-hewn battering ram, for the stump of the freshly-cut tree was coated with melting ice.

Perhaps the Tsurani had just taken the fort, or were venturing an attack when the Dark Brothers had hit them, pressing right through to finish off Brendan’s defenders as well. The pattern of bodies indicated that the Tsurani had tried to break out, heading towards the south-west corner of the clearing and the trail that ran straight back to territory they held. The piled-up knot of dead were stopped a good hundred yards short of the main trail which headed into the heart of Tsurani-held territory.

He stared at the trail for a moment, feeling a knot in his stomach. He had walked it often enough as a boy; it was the trail back to his family’s estates … He forced his attention away from bitter memory and back to the present.

With fifty men in Brendan’s garrison the Tsurani would not have ventured an attack with less than two hundred. If the Dark Brothers had come into the fray it meant there were at least three hundred of them, maybe more. They didn’t risk a fight like this unless the odds were on their side. He had to know. With only sixty-five of his men left, four of the wounded having survived the night march and still needing to be carried, it was a deadly situation if the moredhel were still in the area.

He caught the scent of Tinuva. It was strange, there was something vaguely different about the scent of elves, not a perfume, but it seemed to carry a warmth, a vitality of life with it, like the first morning of spring. He felt the elf’s breath.

‘They’re here. Moredhel,’ Tinuva whispered, his voice drifting so gently it could not have been heard more than half a dozen feet away.

Dennis nodded. ‘How many?’

Tinuva weighed the question for what seemed to Dennis a long time. The elves’ sense of time was far more stately than humans’. After a long while, he said, ‘At least two hundred, maybe more.’

‘Are you certain?’ asked Dennis.

‘No,’ replied the elf. ‘But do you see any moredhel bodies out there?’

‘No,’ conceded Dennis.

‘Any dead or wounded they carried off. They would have had to come in numbers so overwhelming that the garrison and the Tsurani were quickly overrun, else we would see more sign of them. Look.’

Dennis looked to where the elf pointed and not understanding, finally asked, ‘What am I looking for?’

‘There are no broken moredhel arrows. They have cleared this area of their passing. They don’t want us to know they’ve been here.’

Gregory nodded. Pointing to the smoking char that had been the stockade, he said, ‘That’s sort of difficult to ignore, my friend.’

Tinuva said, ‘But if you found it in the spring, might you not think the Tsurani had overrun the fort and left behind this memento?’

Dennis didn’t hesitate. ‘No, the Tsurani would have claimed this position. To the north is the abandoned mine road that leads into the mountains. To the east are the marshlands and mountains. With the Tsurani controlling Mad Wayne’s and most of the land west of here … From here they could raid south behind our lines until we drove them out.’ Suddenly Dennis felt a stab of alarm. ‘The Dark Brothers are still close by!’ he hissed quietly.

‘They’re probably tending their wounded and waiting for the snow to stop before they return to dispose of the Tsurani dead,’ Gregory said in a hoarse whisper. ‘I don’t think they know we are here though,’ He glanced skyward as the snow slackened.

‘Don’t risk your life on that thought, my friend,’ Tinuva said, again his voice was a drifting shimmer barely heard.

‘Circle,’ Dennis whispered.

Dennis slid back down from boulders. Spying Alwin, he gestured for him to remain in position, indicating that the three of them would circle around the fort and that moredhel were in the area. After nine years in the field, the Marauders had a sophisticated system of hand signals to cover most situations. Alwin signed that he understood and would comply.

Having approached the fort from the west, Dennis started north, following the direction of the low ridge. The realm of the moredhel was to the north, though it didn’t necessarily mean that was the direction they had attacked from. Besides, the next major trail, the one that connected Brendan’s Stockade and Mad Wayne’s Fort, entered at the north-west corner of the clearing. Perhaps there would be signs there that could help unravel the mystery.

As he drifted along the ridge, staying low, he kept the remains of Brendan’s Stockade in view. Yet another link to the past lost within the last day, he thought.

The stockade was one of a dozen such along the Yabon frontier, garrisoned out of Tyr-Sog. Unlike the mountains to the east, which were dominated by major passes guarded by the border barons – Ironpass, Northwarden, and High Castle – the western mountains were shot through with trails and little passes. Smuggling in the west was common, but none of the passes was sufficient for any large-scale invasion southward. So the stockades had been constructed over the years.

Each was owned by a trader or innkeeper, who kept it repaired out of profits, while the Baron of Tyr-Sog and the Earl of LaMut paid for the garrison ensconced within; they were much-utilized stops for traders and caravans heading down into the heart of the Kingdom and as such very profitable before the war.

Brendan’s had been one of the more successful stops on the trade routes; from here one could turn south to the Kingdom proper, west toward Ylith or LaMut, or north for a shortcut route that would eventually lead to Yabon. Now Brendan and his family were certain to lie dead within.

Dennis kept his eyes busy as he circled, but he felt regret. Brendan had been a good sort, open-handed to those he liked, always ready to offer a pint and a joint of meat to someone down on their luck. As a boy Dennis had stopped there often enough with his father and Jurgen when they went hunting together. Brendan was that type that never seemed to age, perpetually frozen at a stocky middle-age, gravel-voiced, with an expansive girth that cascaded over a thick leather belt, a first-class brawler; and a damned good friend to all who lived a precarious existence along the frontier.

He was, as well, a notorious cheat when it came to gambling, a fact Dennis had witnessed when Jurgen had caught him at it. The fight that resulted had become something of a legend, with Jurgen’s nose permanently mashed over to one side and Brendan missing part of an ear.

The two had been good friends after that, both appreciating the mettle of the other, but never again did they venture into a game of dice or the new craze of cards with numbers and pictures painted on them. During the night march Dennis had thought about Brendan, and had pondered how he would react to the news that Jurgen was dead. No need to worry about that now and he wondered which had greeted the other at the entrance of Lims-Kragma’s Hall. Perhaps now they could gamble together again, if such games were allowed over there, while they waited to be judged by the Goddess of the Dead.

After covering two hundred yards the rise of ground dropped down towards a narrow forest stream, partly frozen over. The trail to Mad Wayne’s Fort, a position now in Tsurani hands, followed the stream and he paused, looking down on it from above.

There were tracks … and lying by the stream on the far side of the trail was a body, a Tsurani, his throat cut, the ground around him an icy pink.

The three waited for several minutes, carefully scanning the trail, stream, and surrounding woods. Dennis finally looked at Tinuva, who nodded. The elf pulled a bow out from under his cloak, nocked an arrow, and drew it half back.

Dennis took a deep breath and slipped down the trail, pouncing catlike, wincing slightly at the sound of the icy slush crunching beneath his feet. He looked first to the north-west in the direction of Mad Wayne’s and away from the smoking ruins of Brendan’s Stockade. The trail disappeared into the early morning mist.

Nothing.

Gregory landed beside him, swung out his bow and drew it, pointing it up the trail, tensed and ready.

Still nothing.

Dennis looked down at the ground and his heart stopped. It was churned into a muddy slop which was quickly icing over. He moved slowly, scanning for details. A large number had passed down the trail, heading towards the stockade; he could see frozen imprints that must have been made during the night.

The prints weren’t made by the heavy sandals and footcloths of the Tsurani, but by the booted feet of moredhel, men, and the deeper hoofprints of horses and mountain trolls.

What was chilling, though, was that there were prints heading back up the trail and they were fresh, so fresh that droplets of moisture were still oozing into them as ice formed. But not as many as had come in. It was hard to tell – perhaps fifty at most, and no horses.

Battle losses? No, he had not seen any moredhel corpses around the fort. There should have at least been some wounded, drops of blood, a dragging footstep, but these moredhel had been running. Why the haste?

He looked up. Tinuva was still above him, watchful. Dennis pointed to the trail then to the north-west and made the gesture for moredhel, then held his finger tips to his throat, indicating that it was only minutes, a matter of heart beats since their passing.

Tinuva nodded and moved out. Dennis looked at Gregory who set off as well, crossing to the other side of the trail and moving into the stream where he could travel without leaving tracks.

Dennis slipped down to the Tsurani body and touched its leg. The body was just stiffening, dead several hours at the most; had he died earlier in the night rigor would have set in. Looking at the ground, he could figure it out easily enough. The man was a sentry, guarding the trail while the attack on the fort went in, or had in fact already taken the position. It had been a clean kill, stealthy, throat cut from ear to ear and no sign of struggle other than the final spasmodic thrashing of a dying man.

Dennis looked back to the north-west and caught a glimpse of Gregory who was looking back. Dennis pointed to himself and then towards the stockade. Gregory nodded and disappeared into the mist-shrouded forest.

Choosing speed over caution Dennis got back up on to the trail and started off at a slow trot.

The task now was to find out which direction the rest of the moredhel had taken. If the band had split up, scattering after the attack to throw off any pursuit, he’d swing his own men in behind the group heading towards Mad Wayne’s Fort, finish them, then reoccupy Brendan’s. He’d send Gregory and Tinuva back to Lord Brucal’s base camp to ask for reinforcements while Dennis and his company repaired the stockade. But, if the moredhel were indeed returning in force to clean up the Tsurani dead, as Tinuva speculated, Dennis wanted to be well clear of the area before they got back. Defending a rebuilt stockade was one thing; fighting among the ashes on an exposed hillock while being hit from all sides was quite another.

He slowed as he reached the edge of the forest, slipping in behind a towering pine. Closer now to the stockade, he could pick out more details though the smoke was still thick. There were only a couple of Tsurani dead around the northern approach, for the bulk of them were by the gate and the road that headed south-west and the safety of their territory.

As he moved slowly, he noticed something down by the stream. A dark mound rose up amid a small copse of trees. It was almost covered with snow. It took a moment for Dennis’s eye to make sense of the dark shape, but then he saw it: moredhel dead, several dozen of them and the picture began to fit together in Dennis’s mind.

Clever bastards. They had carried off their dead to leave a puzzle, hiding them nearby. In another two hours, Dennis would have been looking at just another snow-covered bump in the earth. If that force was as large as Tinuva speculated, most of them might be heading up to visit the Tsurani now holding Mad Wayne’s, but chances were the rest were lurking nearby, watching, most likely on the other side of the clearing.

Damn clever. Then a more obvious possibility occurred to him.

If we and the Tsurani were fighting a battle here, Dennis thought, both sides would most likely be rushing up reinforcements even now. They’d reach the clearing and stop, the same way we did. Dennis wondered if at this very second there were other eyes, Tsurani eyes, gazing at the fort and wondering what to do next. Curiosity, however, would lead most finally to venture in. Once out in the open the trap would be sprung. He realized with a cold certainty that the moredhel heading up the trail to Mad Wayne’s were not a force heading out on an additional raid, or fleeing. They were an anvil, waiting for the trap to be sprung and for those fleeing the trap to run straight into them. It could be that they were less than a couple of hundred yards off, and no more than a quarter of a mile. As certain as he was of anything, Dennis knew that he was being watched by moredhel scouts. If they hadn’t seen Tinuva or Gregory, they might think him an advance trailbreaker who would soon return the way he had come to carry word to his commander; they would wait until the Kingdom soldiers returned in force, then spring their trap.

Now what?

Trap the trappers most likely deployed on the far side of the clearing, go after the smaller group circling behind him, or get the hell out now?

Use caution when dealing with their kind, Jurgen had always said. His old friend would have told him to get the hell out. If Brendan and the Tsurani had been wiped out by them, there were undoubtedly enough moredhel nearby to annihilate Dennis’s small command. Had the moredhel scout who was surely watching him known that a short distance down the trail sixty-odd cold, tired, and hungry Kingdom soldiers waited, he would be carrying word at this moment. Dennis knew what he must do.

Get out, circle around, then warn off any Kingdom troops that might be approaching from the south. He knew he would have to stand up, glance around as if satisfied that no danger lingered and move quickly back to where his command waited. Let the moredhel think him a solitary scout. Dennis would not be returning this way, and neither would any Kingdom force if he could intercept them. Let the Dark Brothers and the Tsurani fight with each other for a while. The moredhel would not linger to occupy a human stockade, and if the Tsurani managed to drive them away, Duke Brucal, Earl Vandros of LaMut, and Baron Moyet could decide how to drive them out of here and Mad Wayne’s next spring.

Dennis and his scouts had signals to use in these situations. He would remove his heavy cloak, shaking it as if he was trying to rid it of excess water. That would let Tinuva and Gregory know he was under scrutiny and they needed to withdraw without being seen. Dennis was on the verge of standing up to do just this when he saw the enemy. Stepping out of the forest, down on the south-west side of the clearing, a lone Tsurani appeared, easily picked out by his bright blue lacquered armour.

Dennis grinned. Damned fool, typical of them. Make a big show of bravado. A new plan instantly formed in Dennis’s mind. Except for a couple of their best units the Tsurani were blundering fools in the forest compared to his Marauders. The moredhel had to know additional Tsurani were here. In fact, it lessened the likelihood the moredhel knew that Dennis’s unit was nearby. The trap was set for the Tsurani. Let the two sides slaughter each other while we slip away, or with luck the Tsurani will so weaken the moredhel we might even finish them both off and reclaim the fort for ourselves. This might actually get amusing, he thought with a wolfish smile, and then he heard the crack of a branch.

‘It is a trap,’ Force Leader Asayaga hissed, gesturing towards the smoking ruins of the stockade.

Sugama said nothing, but Asayaga could already read what his second-in-command was thinking, and what he would do.

The night march had been an exercise in stupidity and waste. Two hours of double-quick march in daylight could have brought them to this position, but instead they had endured a frigid, miserable night. His men were exhausted, shivering from the wretched cold, and the perverse gods of this world were sending down bucketful’s of snow.

Now this damnable disaster. It was obvious that Force Leader Hagamaka of the Gineisa had launched the attack without waiting for the reinforcements Asayaga was bringing up. The thought of a Minwanabi ally failing so miserably, so publicly, might have brought Asayaga some pleasure, except for the sight of so many fine soldiers of the Empire dead, slaughtered in a futile battle. It was yet another tragic waste of good men. But why the urgent command for a night march through dangerous territory if Hagamaka wasn’t going to wait?