Arik and Tedi rose at first light and surveyed the area they had chosen to camp at the night before. “It’s a good thing we didn’t try to roam around last night,” Tedi commented, looking over the cliff to the sea. The promontory they were on was about eighty feet above where the waves crashed into the rocks below. The view was spectacular with long vistas of beach, both north and south. This was clearly the highest point for some distance and afforded glimpses of the coastal highway farther inland where the trees were sparse enough to see through or the view was not blocked by the plateau itself.
Arik fixed breakfast while Tedi stood inhaling the strong salt air. After a quick breakfast Tedi cleaned up the campsite while Arik checked out the surroundings. “Hey, Tedi,” Arik called. “I think I see something coming down the beach.”
Tedi ran over and looked northward. “I don’t see anything,” he remarked. “It’s too far to see anything, anyway. Maybe it’s just someone out for a morning walk.”
“Could be,” Arik muttered straining for a better view, “but not unless they’re on horseback and it looks like two people. Wait, they’ve stopped.”
Tedi looked once again, trying to make out what Arik was looking at. “I don’t know about seeing people or horses,” he commented, “but that looks like the area where we left the beach yesterday.”
“Yeah, well, they are, too,” Arik said hurriedly as he watched the tiny dots disappear into the forest. “I think someone might be tracking us. If they are on horseback, they’ll catch us for sure.”
“How do you know they are on horseback?” Tedi asked. “I can’t see anything at that distance.”
“By the relative size of the two dots,” Arik answered. “I think one of them got down for some reason and led his horse. I could be wrong, but can we afford to take a chance?”
Tedi thought for a while and said, “Horseback won’t help them that much on the trail we took yesterday. It was hardly more than an animal trail and not often used, at that.”
“Unless they swing out to the coastal highway,” declared Arik. Arik swung his eyes back to the only major road in the area and froze. “Tedi,” he whispered. “Look down at the road.”
Tedi joined his friend and looked where he was pointing. A large group of riders was gathered milling around, not traveling. “The trees are in the way,” Tedi frowned. “I can’t quite make out who they are or how many of them there are, but I am beginning to not like this.”
“I like it even less,” added Arik. “It looks like more than ten, but worst of all, one of them is almost assuredly a woman.”
“Okay, let’s keep calm,” instructed Tedi. “If they knew right where we were, we would have been dead on our blankets this morning.”
“You have a great way of making me feel calm,” Arik quipped. “We can’t outrun them if they have even one fairly decent tracker. We can’t go out to sea or to the road. A couple of them are coming in from the North. We really don’t have much of a choice on which way to go.”
“We do have the option of staying right here,” declared Tedi. “This place is pretty defensible.”
“I don’t think I’m ready to start killing people even if they turn out to be Dark Riders,” frowned Arik.
“Well, you better get ready, Arik,” Tedi scolded. “If they come for us, it won’t be to take us home to our fathers. Even if the witch is with them, Dark Riders don’t openly track someone just to ask questions. Oh, she may ask some questions before she kills us, but you better believe that we’ll end up dead no matter what. The Dark Riders don’t normally leave anything alive behind them.”
Arik stood staring at the milling riders on the road for several minutes. “Okay,” Arik finally said, “we’ll shoot if we have to, but staying here is suicide. We may kill some of them before they get us, but there are too many of them for us to win. We will head south trying to avoid them. If it comes to a fight, we’ll fight, but we’ll hide and avoid it if we can. We may kill fewer of them with this plan, but how many of them are dead will matter little to us if we are dead, too.”
Tedi nodded his head in agreement and they both began gathering their gear. Quickly, they started southward down the steep path. When they reached the bottom, Arik stopped suddenly. “I have an idea,” he declared excitedly. “Follow me.”
Arik broke through the forest undergrowth with no regard to hampering the trackers and headed for the sea. When they reached the beach he was panting, but he did not stop. Arik waded right on out in the surf while continuing south. “Is this your good idea?” asked Tedi frantically. “We drown ourselves and deny the Dark Riders their fun?”
Arik stopped and smiled. “Okay, now that they are convinced that we hope to erase our tracks the same way we did at Lorgo, we walk north through the water until we reach the rocks below the promontory to our north. We can circle the bluff behind them and cross the coastal highway.”
Tedi smiled at the idea until he looked towards the rocks that he had seen the surf crashing on from up above earlier. “You want us to cross those rocks?” Tedi blurted out.
Arik nodded. “Have you ever spent the night with Dark Riders?”
Tedi didn’t even bother to answer, but started wading towards the rocks. The rocks were slippery and coated with some type of green slime wherever they had remained submerged for long periods of time. The salt spray here was intense and soon the boys’ eyes were smarting. Several times they slipped and were submerged. Once Arik had to grab Tedi by the collar to keep him from being swept away or dashed on the rocks. Slowly the boys made their way to the base of the promontory and rested on the rocks. The effort of forcing their way through the surf had tired both boys. “Why did you head here instead of continuing around the North side of the rocks?” asked Tedi.
“Two reasons,” panted Arik. “One, we have to be sure that the two riders we saw along the beach have already passed before we try to get behind them and two, look at the cliff face. It is hollowed out enough that we can stay here and rest and we can’t be seen from the shore either to the North or the South. Three, I could use the rest.”
Tedi chuckled and leaned back against the cold stonewall. The boys wiggled as far back as they could go so they could remain dry. “We can stay overnight back here if we have to,” remarked Tedi. “I think it is about high tide now. This far back would only get wet on a moon tide.”
“If we get some sleep now,” commented Arik, we can move out at low tide and it will be dark. Wherever our pursuers are they will be camped for the night and we should be able to avoid them fairly easily.”
Tedi agreed and the boys were tired enough to doze off.
“Where are they now?” asked Garth laying his bow on the seat of the wagon.
“They are sleeping at the foot of the cliff,” Kalina stated. “They are hoping the Dark Riders will pass them by and I think they might. Then they plan to cross over the road and lose the Dark Riders.”
“Nice if it worked,” Garth said simply. “The problem is the Dark Riders are not totally stupid. They will realize that they have been duped and that will lead them back to the cliff. It sounds like the boys have a defensible position, but they also have no reconnaissance capability. If they decide to leave their hole while the Dark Riders are near the cliff, they will be visible.”
“We could lose them before we can react to save them,” summarized Kalina. “This is not acceptable.”
“I agree,” Garth declared as he started moving. The bandit grabbed a coil of rope off of the wagon and retrieved his bow. “I want you to get the wagon about a half mile into the woods west of the coastal highway just north of the cliff. Avoid the Dark Riders at all costs. If you are not there when I need you, I will move directly south from that spot until we meet.”
“Where are you going, Garth?” she demanded.
“Me,” he laughed. “Why, I am going hunting. There are a couple of pigeons on the rocks, and I understand they are in season.”
Wolinda screamed at the men, “What do you mean, they didn’t come this way? Are you trackers or slackers? You told me they came south. You said that they hadn’t left the water and now you’re saying that they didn’t get this far. Explain yourself.”
The head Dark Rider stepped between the two scouts and faced Wolinda. “What they are saying is that the boys headed back north, Mistress. They must have done it very soon after they entered the water or we would have caught them already.”
“Now you’ve become a tracker, Klarg,” spat Wolinda. “I thought these two fine specimens were the trackers.”
“Enough, Wolinda,” Klarg cautioned as his men gathered around. Klarg was dressed like the rest of the Dark Riders in dark brown leathers with spurs on his boots and bands of metal spikes on their leather gauntlets, but he was also a massive hulk of a man. His imposing figure towered over the hardy witch. “My men wanted to check the area where the boys entered the water, but you were adamant about them heading south. You have no one but yourself to blame for this delay.”
Wolinda was stunned. She led this team and the stupid Dark Riders should know better than dispute her authority. She could destroy every man here with her power and their leader hadn’t even addressed her as Mistress. “You should have better control over your emotions, Klarg. I may be forced to punish you if you continue in this insolent manner.”
“Do not be a fool, Wolinda,” Klarg asserted, “and do not take me for one, either. You are in charge of this expedition and we have followed you without question, but it is the Dark One whom we both serve. If your actions jeopardize this mission, I would be within my rights to eliminate you, witch or no. I also have nineteen men to back my play. If you managed to kill all of us, you would still fail in your mission as you did back in Lorgo. And I’m sure you know that failure is death. My men and I are willing to follow your orders to accomplish our task, but do not blame them for your actions. If we must backtrack to capture these boys, let’s be about it without recriminations. If you are acceptable to our agreement, we are ready to serve.”
The color drained out of Wolinda’s face. She burned with the desire to kill every one of these maggots, but Klarg was right. Without them she was likely to fail and one did not fail the Dark One. “Lead the men north, Klarg,” she ordered.
Klarg slapped his fist to his chest in a salute. “I hear and obey, Mistress.”
Arik and Tedi awoke to the sounds of horses not far off. Quickly, the boys sat up and tried to determine which direction the horses were coming from. It was already dark out and the water was at low tide, but the sounds echoed off the walls of their little hideaway and determining direction was impossible. The boys hefted their duffel bags and readied their bows. Arik slid down the rocks a way and tried to pick up the sounds again. It had gone deadly quiet and he stayed perched on the rocks waiting without movement. When he finally heard a sound, it was the sound of men wading through the water from the South. “There are men coming through the water,” Arik whispered. “We need to move now or we will be trapped.”
Tedi was already at Arik’s side as the taller boy started edging across the rocks to the north. As the boys stepped into the water, they could hear shouts coming from behind them. Arik could distinctly hear a man bellow the order, “Take nine men with you over the top and cut them off.” Frantically, Arik tried to run through the water, but succeeded only in kicking up more water.
“We aren’t going to make it,” Tedi shouted. “They will have us between them.”
“Just keep going,” demanded Arik. “Don’t ever give up.”
As the boys struggled through the thigh-high water, ten horsemen galloped up the southern incline and across the plateau towards the northern path that led down to the other side of the rocks. The charge to encircle the boys quickly turned to chaos as the first four riders succumbed to a rope stretched across the path at neck height, right where the path started down the northern slope. The rest of the group of Dark Riders reacted quickly enough to avoid the unseen rope, but confusion reigned as the forward riders turned their horses aside and the following riders smashed into them. While it might have been expected that several riders would fall from their saddles during such a collision, no one could mistake the sound of a bowstring singing as those riders fell.
“Bowmen towards the sea,” shouted one of the Dark Riders. “Dismount and take cover!”
One of the Dark Riders dismissed the orders and charged towards where he thought the bowmen must be hiding. A black shape hiding behind a bush near the cliff’s edge hurled a Lanoirian Star, which struck the rider’s forehead. The horse continued to carry the dead rider and plunged off the cliff striking the rocks below.
Garth took stock of his situation. Two of the lead riders were down and unmoving. Two were down, but writhing in pain. Three had fallen to arrows and one had charged over the cliff. That left two healthy Dark Riders trying to kill him and two who would regain their wits and functionality all too soon. Garth strained to see the two healthy riders, but the fool who had charged had distracted him and now they were well hidden. Garth crawled slowly along the edge of the cliff towards the two fallen riders who had hit the rope. He caught a momentary glance of one of the healthy riders doing the same, but heading for the point. He froze for a second to make sure that the other man had not spotted him and then continued on.
Garth reached the last bush before the northern path where his rope had helped even the odds. The two wounded men lay curled in fetal positions holding their faces and howling in pain. Garth knew he had to find the last healthy man before risking exposure of himself in the open to finish these two wounded men. Laying a Lanoirian Star in the dirt before him, Garth stole a glance behind him to see if the point man had decided to come back this way. Satisfied that he had a few moments to complete his task, Garth reached into a long narrow pouch and extracted a long tube and two slender myric quills. The myric quills were poisonous and taken from an animal that inhabited marshlands. Their use as a weapon was pioneered by the Targan Rangers, a group of elite soldiers in Targa before the Collapse, but most bandits and mercenaries shunned their use because obtaining the quills often led to the death of the gatherer. The poison in the quills was so strong that it produced instant death and many a gatherer failed on their first attempt.
Garth fed a quill into the long blow tube and raised it to his lips. Steadily, he sighted on the farthest man and blew. He reloaded the tube as quickly as he could because he knew that the cut off of the man’s screams would bring his enemy running towards him. Garth sent the second dart into the closest man and shoved the tube into its pouch as he lifted the Lanoirian Star he had placed in the dirt with his other hand. The two remaining Dark Riders were charging his position, one from the point behind him and the other from across the clearing by the south path. Had Garth been visible, arrows would be coming his way instead of charging men. Garth leaped to his feet and hurled the Lanoirian Star at the man coming from the point. Even as he watched the man clutching his bleeding throat as he tumbled off the cliff, Garth pulled his large sinuous sword from the scabbard on his back. Holding his great sword with both hands, Garth twirled just in time to slice through the last Dark Rider’s midsection.
Garth ran to the four dead men by the rope and cut off two of their scabbards before wiping his blade clean on one of the dead men and sheathing it. He grabbed the two Dark Rider swords and ran down the path to the North.
Arik and Tedi heard the shouts and screams from above and hurried on. Tedi continuously turned his head to look behind himself for any signs that the men were getting closer. He never caught sight of the men, but he gasped when he saw the Dark Rider and horse plummet over the cliff to the rocks below. The boys had just made it to shore when another Dark Rider bounced off the side of the cliff and landed on his back in front of them, a Lanoirian Star buried in his throat. The boys leaped over the body and continued running though their legs felt like they were about to give up.
Trying to run through the undergrowth was almost as difficult as running through the water and both boys were getting very tired. As they broke through the bushes to the path that paralleled the seacoast, they both came to an abrupt halt. The bandit from Lorgo stood directly in front of them holding the reins to three horses in one hand and two sheathed swords in the other. “Why am I not surprised that it is you two who are causing so much fuss?” chuckled Garth.
The two boys looked at each other and started slowly backing up. “Let me guess,” Tedi spat, “you expect us to believe that you aren’t one of the Dark Riders who are chasing us. We give you our weapons and you escort us back to their camp so they can torture us before killing us.”
Garth just smiled and tossed the two sheathed swords at their feet. “I would hardly welcome your company, fisherboy, but Kalina thinks you are worthy of rescuing from the Dark Riders. You can have the swords and two of their horses to do with what you want. If you come with me, I can offer you safety. If not, then take the horses and get going where you will, but make your mind up now because I am not waiting. I’ve killed ten of them up on the plateau, but there are ten more coming as we speak, as well as a witch, and I am getting tired of killing men for the sake of boys.” Garth stepped forward and shoved the reins of two of the horses towards the boys. Arik stepped forward and grabbed the reins. Garth twirled and mounted his horse as soon as Arik had taken the reins.
The sounds of men shouting behind them indicated that the Dark Riders pursuing them had found the body that had fallen from above. “Time’s up, fisherboy,” Garth whispered. “Follow or flee, I head west.” Garth took off heading for the coastal highway.
Arik and Tedi exchanged glances and quickly picked up the swords and mounted their new horses. “I don’t suppose being hung as horse thieves is any worse than being killed for no reason at all,” Arik remarked as he turned his horse westward.
“Surely you don’t believe his story,” Tedi quipped as he turned to follow. “You don’t really think one man could have killed ten Dark Riders by himself? And who is this Kalina?”
Arik sighed as he followed the path that the bandit had made through the bushes. “I don’t know if he did it by himself,” stated Arik, “but I have no doubt that the Dark Riders died up there on the plateau. These scabbards have been cut off somebody’s body and there was blood on the blade that cut them. These horses didn’t just wander in from the road and the Dark Riders who were supposed to be coming over the top of the plateau never made it. Think what you want, but I am inclined to follow this bandit, at least until I learn more of what is going on.”
“I think he is one of them and that this Kalina whom he is taking us to is the witch who held us on the docks in Lorgo,” Tedi declared.
“Well, my father said that this man was a killer,” argued Arik. “He certainly just had the chance to kill us without anyone finding out and he didn’t. That means, to me, that we can trust him to some degree. I don’t mean to trust him very far, but right now we need a safe place to hide and figure out what is going on. I don’t know of any other solution, Tedi.”
The boys soon came to the coastal highway and crossed over it. A short way into the woods they came to a small clearing with the bandit and two horses standing in it. One horse was the one the bandit had left the battle on. The other was a large, beautiful black stallion. “I had to stop and get my own horse,” explained Garth. “If you boys have decided to accept our safety, just continue heading west. I will follow and make sure that no Dark Riders are tracking us.”
Arik simply nodded and continued across the clearing and westward.
Klarg was studying the placement of the bodies and the method by which each was killed when Wolinda reached the plateau. “What happened here?” she demanded.
“It would appear that our little boys had some help this evening,” Klarg explained. “Several very skilled assassins, if you ask me.”
“Why assassins and not mercenaries?” inquired Wolinda.
“The weapons and methods used, Mistress,” Klarg answered. “Perhaps several mercenaries and one assassin. That is possible. Lanoirian Stars are used by some very skilled mercenaries, but myric quills are used only by highly skilled assassins. They are extremely dangerous to use. A single prick while loading one will lead to instant death. No mercenary would risk ending his career with such a dubious weapon.”
“Are you sure that they were here to help the boys?” Wolinda asked.
“No,” replied Klarg, “I am not. The rope was meant to create a killing ground and allow for a slaughter during the confusion. Bandits have used such tricks in the past to snare a quarry, but it normally requires horsemen traveling at great speed to have any real effect. That is what puzzles me. Why put such a trap on this plateau? I would expect bandits to target the coastal highway, not some seldom used path.”
“Could it have been the boys, themselves?” Wolinda queried.
“Not a chance,” laughed Klarg. “This was professionally done. If it was done to aid the boys, it was very lucky. I, myself, did not know that I would send riders along this path until I actually did so. No, Mistress, I think we may have just stumbled into a bandits’ den by accident. The rope was probably part of a standard campsite protection and they were only alerted by the noise from down below when we spotted the boys. That is the only scenario that makes any sense.”
“What does that mean for our mission, Klarg,” Wolinda inquired.
“Unfortunately, our two trackers were among the ten dead men,” Klarg responded. “The spooked horses have left so many trails through the bushes that we will not find the proper trail until we have more light. I suggest that I go to Toresh and get replacements. I think ten men is enough to get the boys, but if there are bandits in the area who do not fear to kill Dark Riders, we should have a company strong enough to deal with them, as well. Plus, we need to replace the trackers.”
Wolinda thought a moment before responding. “Your plan is acceptable, Klarg,” she began, “but send one of your men instead of going yourself. If this is a bandits’ lair, your expertise in leading the men will be valuable should they decide to return and attack during the night.” Wolinda would never have stated her real reasons for keeping Klarg close. Once in Toresh, Klarg could report on Wolinda’s lack of progress and without Klarg around to contain his men, Wolinda might not wake up from her night’s sleep.