It had clearly been such. Though no trace was found of any attempt to lay a fire, a good number of folk had lived within its raggedly cleared confines for many days to judge by the scatterings of refuse and dung.
While Vaskos refilled water bottles at a crystal-clear spring whose gentle gurgling fed a tiny rill dividing the camp, his father and several Freefighters wandered about the area, examining oddments left behind by its former occupants—who, without a doubt, had decamped suddenly, and not too long ago.
Freefighter Lieutenant Bohreegahd Hohguhn ambled up to the nobleman with a crudely made spear—just a knifeblade bound into the end of five feet of sapling, with the bark still on.
“It ain’t no warcamp, my lord,” the mercenary averred fa his nasal, mountain dialect. “Ain’t no rhyme nor no reason to these here lean-tos. But they ain’t entirely peaceable neither, else they wouldn’t of been a-makin’ this here sad excuse for a spear. Outlaws, you reckun, my lord?”
Sheathing his broadsword, the old lord took the spear and scrutinized its single-edged blade, answering, “No, lieutenant, I think not. I’d have known of any band this large.”
Vaskos paced up to them with the filled water bottles, adding, “Nor would outlaws have small children in a forest camp. And the mud along the rill has bare footprints so small that only a child of no more than three yean could have pressed them.”
Now Hohguhn had, while listening to father and son, snapped up the cheekpieces of his open-faced helm and removed it to vigorously apply dirty fingernails to furiously itching scalp, so the humming sound and its deadly import were clearer than to those whose ears still were covered by steel.
With a shouted “Down!” be flung his wiry body against that of the startled komees, while violently shoving big Vaskos, who fell forward so that the stone aimed for his unprotected face clanged instead off his raised visor.
But three of the wandering Freefighters were not so lucky, and when at last the komees’ party had crawled or scurried back to the shelter of the woods opposite those which held the slingers, the bodies of those three still lay where they had fallen. Against men clad in open-faced helms, slingstones can spell instant death.
V
Briefly Vaskos showed himself, trying to spot the positions of the ambushers, and a subdued humming launched a ragged volley toward him. But the range was too great and only one or two stones bounced off the first treetrunks, most falling in the deserted clearing.
“That be a warnin’ and a sample of more to come, y’ child-stealin’ bastards!” snarled a deep voice from the trees and brush which hid the slingers. “We’uns owe yer mistress nothin’, y’ hear? Make a Ehleenee church out’n ever’ house we left, but you come after us ‘n’ our women ’n’ our kids ’n’ we’ll kill ever’ last one of you priest-bound boy-buggers!”
“That,” whispered the komees amazedly, “was Ehrik Ooontehros, the village headman! What in the world could that witless bitch have done to inflame so even-tempered a man to ambush and murder?”
Before Vaskos or Hohguhn, who were continuing to watch the source of both stones and voice, could divine his intent, Komees Hari was already swinging up onto Steelsheen and mindspeaking the stallion out into the campsite, even while he stripped off his gauntlets and commenced to unbuckle his helm.
Hohguhn would never have suspected that big, burly Vaskos could move so fast. At a weaving, crouching run, he reached his father’s side just before the older man cleared the last of the screening brush. Gripping the near stirrup leathers, he frantically remonstrated.
“Is my father a fool? They’ve already downed three good men—they’ll not stick at yet another. Wait until Gaib and his men are up to us, at least. A few patterns of shafts will clear that brush in record time.”
The old nobleman lifted off the helm and thrust it down at Vaskos, patting his son’s weather-browned cheek with the other hand. “You need not fear for me, lad. Those poor men yonder are my people. They’ll not harm me—not if they can see who I am. Hehrah has obviously wronged them in some way, else they’d be in Horse Hall village, not faring like wild beasts here in the forest Without doubt, some more of her damned perversion of a religion. You caught what Ehrik said about churches, didn’t you?”
Then the big gray was into the clearing, and Vaskos was left clutching his father’s helm and nursing his apprehensions. He watched the stallion come to a halt, then commence a slow, stately walk across the width of the campsite, tail held high and neck arched in pride. Then came again the sound he had so feared: the humming of a whirling sling. •
“Father?’ he shouted. “My lord, beware!” But when he would have run after his sire, many hands restrained him.
And Captain Linstahk was there before him, saying, “You cannot aid him now, Vaskos. And would your death make his any more meaningful?”
With the abrupt end of the humming, a whistling stone narrowly missed Hari’s head, caroming off his shoulderpiece. But the old nobleman might have been an image, carved of one of those stone outcrops which dotted his lands. He never so much as flinched at the loud clang of stone on steel. He sat his mount easily, erect in his high-bowed warkak, loosely handling his reins, his bare swordhand resting on his armored thigh.
His clear baritone rang out in a merry laugh, followed by the chiding comment, “A bad cast, Ehrik! You missed the mark by at least a handsbreadth. Sun and Wind, man, have we then grown so old and decrepit, you and I? Why, I’ve seen you bring down a stooping hawk with that sling!”
The vicious humming had recommenced. Again it ceased, and Vaskos gritted his teeth, for his father was now closer and, with the westering sun to his back, would provide an unmissable target. But no stone came.
“Ha … Hari … ? My lord? Be it really you?” rumbled the hidden basso.
“Aye, Ehrik. Half-deafened by the last loud note of your slingsong, but it’s me. But man, you know my financial state! How in hell am I going to pay the thoheeks bloodprice on those three Freefighters of his you just slew?” the komees said.
There was a deep whoop of joy from the underbrush, and a black-bearded man of about Vaskos’ age arose from his hiding place, a gap-toothed grin splitting a battered face capped by a handful of blood-caked, dirty bandages. Looking into the brush about him, he crowed, “You see! You see! I told you all that that woman-stealing, child-stealing, ewe-raping dog of a Danos lied in his mossy teeth! He swore Komees Hari lay slain, yet there he sits, you gullible fools. There sits our dear lord! Why bide we here?”
Then they were all about him. The empty-appearing brush poured forth men, women, children, dogs and even a few goats. And Ehrik’s thick arms were lifting up the youngest child of his dead first wife that he might see that this rider was truly the old lord, always the protector of his people. And the others clustered as close as possible, laughing, weeping, chattering, reaching forth dirty, broken-nailed hands to touch a dusty boot or a bit of armor, their tears of happiness almost laying the dust raised by their bare feet.
Watching, Vaskos felt both awe and fierce pride. Awe of a man so uncompromisingly good that he could command such love and devotion from his people, pride that he was the son—even the bastard son—of so just and loyal a man.
As it developed, only one of the Freefighters was dead, the stone having taken him in the eye and smashed a splintering path into the brain. The second had a dented helm and a lump the size of a turkey egg on the side of his head. The last had suffered a broken collarbone—but was conscious and jokingly asserting to have suffered worse injuries from hungry mosquitoes.
While villagers and hidden archers guarded a farflung perimeter, Gaib’s troopers lined up to water their horses at the small spring, then hunkered down to share their rations with the ravenous villagers.