40
URGAZHI

Beka’s scouts spotted the convoy of horse-drawn wagons that morning and trailed it as it wended south through the coastal foothills. There were only ten of them, Gilly reported, and only one decuria of cavalry to guard them, a fact that confirmed Beka’s assumption that they were deep in the Plenimarans’ northern territory now.

The country they’d come into was steep and well wooded. Beka let the scouts keep the wagons in sight, biding her time until they stopped for the night.

The wagoneers made camp in a little forest hollow by a stream just before sundown. Leaving her main group of riders a quarter of a mile down the road, Beka chose her fastest runners, Zir, Tobin, and Jareel, to accompany her, and left Rhylin with orders to disrupt the camp as soon as she had accomplished her mission.

Darkness fell, and the wagoneers lit cook fires for the evening meal. Their escort posted a few guards up and down the road.

Beka and her raiders stole through the darkness toward the supply wagons, each of them armed with jars of firestones they’d captured in a similar raid two days before. Reaching the wagons, Beka looked underneath the nearest and saw unsuspecting wagoneers cooking their evening meal less than twenty feet away.

With Zir keeping watch, Beka and the others split up and scattered firestones over the crates and bales in the wagon beds. Ribbons of smoke curled up quickly, but the wind was in their favor, blowing it away from the camp.

Rhylin had been watching for it as his signal, however. Beka’s group had hardly finished their work before a frantic whinnying came from the Plenimaran horses picketed nearby.

Whooping and waving torches, Rhylin and his decuria drove the draft animals into the camp, scattering startled soldiers and drivers. Flames shot up in the wagons, adding to the confusion.

Before the Plenimaran guards had time to act, Braknil’s decuria charged in with bows and loosed a hail of arrows to cover the retreat of the others. Beka and her group skirted the camp to meet Tealah, who was holding horses for them down the road.

An enemy shaft nicked Zir in the shoulder as he swung up into the saddle. Tobin took an arrow through the heart before he’d reached his horse.

Beka saw him fall but there was nothing she could do but look after the living.

“Retreat! Come on, before they get their horses back,” she yelled. A Plenimaran swordsman charged at her, only to fall with a Skalan arrow in his back.

Leaving the camp in flames behind them, her riders thundered back down the dark road with victorious whoops and catcalls. Among the last to leave, Beka listened to the Plenimaran’s angry outcry with satisfaction.

“Do you know what they called us?” Tare called out with a wild laugh as they rode away. “Urgazhi! Wolf demons.”

An eerie chorus of yells and wolfish howls erupted from the others.

“Well done, Urgazhi Turma!” Beka laughed, as elated as the others.

“I say we’ve earned the honor,” Sergeant Braknil added.

They were like wolves now—traveling by night, employing stealth and speed to attack any target weak enough to be taken, then fading back into the darkness before the enemy could get a clear look at how few of them there actually were.

Over the past two weeks they’d made nine raids, harrying small convoys, burning barns and way stations, and fouling wells as they worked their way south through the hills toward the sea.

Their plan was to strike the coast and follow it north again in the hope of meeting a friendly force.

What Beka wasn’t certain of was just how far south their raiding had driven them, or where the Skalan line currently was. Whatever the case, they’d have to fight like true urgazhi to get back.

“It’s only me, Lieutenant!”

Beka opened her eyes to find Rhylin’s long, homely face just inches above hers.

“It’s almost sundown. You said to wake you,” he said, hunkering down beside her.

Beka sat up and rubbed a hand over her face. “Thanks. I wasn’t sleeping so welt anyway.”

Rhylin handed her his drinking skin, then ran a hand over the brown scruff of beard covering his jaw. “The fever hasn’t come back on you, has it?”

“No, the leg’s fine.” Beka took a drink and handed it back.

They’d made camp in a beech grove. Buds were just breaking out on the branches overhead and through them she could see the first golden streaks of sunset.

“But you’ve still got the dreams, eh?” he asked, then shrugged when Beka glanced up sharply. “You’ve been thrashing and muttering some in your sleep.”

“Well, I wish you’d tell me what I’m saying,” Beka replied, hoping it was dark enough not to betray the color that rose in her cheeks. “I don’t remember a damn thing when I wake up. Any word from Mirn or Gilly yet?”

“That’s what I came to report. Kallas and Ariani just got back from tracking them. It looks like they’ve been captured.”

“Damn.” From what they’d seen so far, the Plenimarans weren’t keeping prisoners alive, and her urgazhi had suffered losses enough already.

Getting to her feet, she glanced around the clearing. In Braknil’s decuria only Kallas, Ariani, Arbelus, and one-eyed Steb were left. Rhylin had Nikides, Syra, Tealah, Jareel, Tare, Marten, Kaylah, and Zir. Of those, Tealah had suffered a sword cut during the third raid and couldn’t use her left arm. Zir and Jareel had festering wounds, and Steb, still recovering from the loss of an eye, had a bad case of the scours.

Now Mirn and Gilly were gone.

“Who’s out now?” she asked.

“Syra has the watch. Arbelus and Steb went scouting about an hour ago.”

“Go wake the others and tell them to eat quickly. We ride as soon as it’s full dark.”

Rhylin gave a quick salute and started around the camp. Beka let out a slow, exasperated breath. She’d hoped the others hadn’t noticed her nightly struggles. At least it had been Rhylin who’d brought it to her attention. Despite his ungainly appearance, he’d proven a good choice for sergeant. He had a calm steadiness about him that only seemed to increase under adversity.

Still, the last thing any of them needed right now was an officer who had bad dreams behind lines; yelling in your sleep was a good way to bring the enemy down on your neck. Rubbing her eyes again, she tried to remember what the dream had been, but nothing would come except a vague feeling of anxiety.

Giving up, she turned her thoughts to more practical matters. Reaching for her tucker sack, she dipped out a cupful of soaked meal and hastily downed it. Coarse and full of grit, the barley meal they’d captured in the last raid was hard on both teeth and stomach. Most of the time they couldn’t chance a fire to boil it into porridge. Instead, they threw it into a leather bag with some water and fragments of dried fish for a few hours until it swelled into a gluey mass Nikides had dubbed “broken tooth pudding.”

They were just saddling up for the night’s ride when Steb came riding back.

“We found Mirn and Gilly, Lieutenant!” he informed Beka.

“Praise Sakor! Where?” Beka demanded as the others crowded around in uneasy silence.

“There’s a Plenimaran column ahead about two miles. They’ve just stopped to make camp for the night. It’s big, Lieutenant, fifty soldiers at least. And maybe twice that in prisoners marching afoot in chains.”

“Prisoners?” Rhylin raised an eyebrow. “That’s the first we’ve heard of that. And you’re sure you saw Gilly and Mirn?”

Steb nodded, his good eye blazing with grief and anger. “The whoreson bastards planked them.”

Braknil cursed, then spat angrily over his left shoulder.

“What do you mean, planked?” Beka demanded.

“It’s an old Plenimaran soldier’s trick, Lieutenant,” the sergeant scowled. “You take a man, tie a plank across his shoulders, and then nail his hands to it.”

Beka stood silent for a moment, feeling a black void opening in her heart. They’d been lucky so far, facing no more than a decuria or two of fighters and panicked wagoneers. And so far, they’d left no one behind but the dead. This was different.

She gripped her sword hilt and growled, “Let’s go have a look.”

Taking Braknil and Kallas, Beka followed Steb. What must this be like for him? she wondered, stealing a look at Steb’s drawn face; the bond between him and Mirn was strong. The two were always together, whether it was around the fire at night, or fighting side by side like twin avenging furies. They usually took scout duty together, too. What had happened today?

The young rider remained grim and silent as he led them to the little hillside gully where Arbelus was keeping watch. Less than a mile below, the scattered campfires of the Plenimaran column winked in the darkness. Beyond the camp, the black expanse of the Inner Sea glimmered with the light of the first stars. The wind was coming off the water tonight and Beka caught a faint, unsettling sound on the air. After a moment she realized it was only the distant crash of surf growling like a hound in its sleep against the rocky cliffs.

“There’s an old road that runs along above the shore,” Arbelus told her. “They set up camp on the landward side of it.”

“You’re certain our men are still alive?” Beka asked, squinting down at the pattern of campfires.

“They were at sundown. I saw the guards prodding them in with the other prisoners for the night.”

Beka chewed at her lip, still glowering at the enemy encampment. At last she turned to Braknil. “It’s the first real force we’ve encountered so far. What do you think? Any chance of grabbing them out tonight?”

Braknil scratched under his bearded chin a moment, looking down at the fires. “I’d say not much, Lieutenant. They’ll have the perimeter sewed tighter than a virgin’s bodice. Even if we did manage to slip in, we’d never fight our way out if they tumbled to us.”

Beka let out an exasperated sigh. “Sakor’s Fist, first they aren’t taking prisoners, then they’ve got a couple hundred. And where in hell did they get that many this far inside their own borders?”

Braknil shrugged. “That’s a good question.”

Arbelus looked up in surprise. “I never thought of that. But I’ll tell you something even stranger.”

“What’s that?”

“Before they settled down for the night, they were marching north.”

“North!” Beka exclaimed softly. “The Mycenian border can’t be more than fifty miles from here, and not a single Plenimaran city in between. If they’re going to all the trouble to take that many prisoners, why on earth aren’t they taking them south where they could use them?”

She rested a hand on Steb’s rigid shoulder. “Still, it makes our task easier. We planned to turn north along the coast anyway. We’ll trail them, haunt them, by the gods, and watch for a chance to grab Mirn and Gilly!”