Vaelin remained crouched behind the yew, eyes closed as his ears drank in the song of the forest. It wasn’t long before the chitter of birds, stilled by the unwelcome intrusion, began to return and the wind carried no more trace of sweating, fearful men.
He emerged from his refuge to find Ellese busily searching the body of the outlaw her arrow had plucked from the treetops. Her movements were swift and practised, hands betraying no sign of a tremble despite having just wrested the life from a man. He knew she had killed before in Cumbrael, during a brief and quickly crushed resurgence of the ever-troublesome Sons of the Trueblade. It doesn’t vex her at all, Reva had written in the letter she sent north along with her adopted daughter. Which vexes me greatly.
He saw scant resemblance to Reva in this girl, hardly surprising given the fact that they shared no blood. Her hair was black and her eyes dark, and she was perhaps an inch shorter, if a little thicker of limb. However, the apparent immunity to the effects of killing was a recognisably familial trait she had clearly picked up somewhere along the road. One she shared with the man she called uncle.
“Bluestone,” she said, tossing aside the dead man’s purse and holding up a handful of gleaming azure pebbles. “Wrapped in cotton so they wouldn’t clink.” She angled her head as she surveyed the outlaw’s corpse. “Knew his business, at least.” She glanced up at Vaelin before adding with a grin, “Not well enough, though.”
Vaelin crouched to retrieve the man’s bow, a flat-staved hunting weapon typical to all fiefs of the Realm, except Cumbrael. Had the fellow possessed a longbow and the skill to use it, Vaelin knew he would likely be dead now.
“Check his scalp,” he told Ellese, who duly whipped away the man’s woollen cap, revealing a shaven head. Vaelin used his boot to turn the corpse’s head until he found it, a crude tattoo forming a dark crimson stain amidst the grey stubble. “The Bloody Sparrows,” he said, moving away.
The outlaw he had killed lay some twenty paces off, facedown with Vaelin’s arrow protruding from his back at a near-vertical angle. Vaelin worked the shaft loose, grunting with the effort of extracting the barbed head from the bony trap of the man’s spine, before turning him over.
“Jumin Vek,” he said after a brief survey of the blotchy, pockmarked face.
“You know him?” Ellese asked.
“I should. I arrested him up on a Queen’s Warrant four years ago. He left a trail of murder, rape and thievery all along the roads of Renfael before fetching up in the Reaches. I packed him off on a ship to face the noose in Frostport.”
“Seems he managed an escape.”
Or bribed his way clear, Vaelin thought. It was an all-too-common occurrence these days. With so much money to be made stealing and smuggling the bounty of the Northern Reaches, it seemed as if every outlaw had the means to buy their way out of trouble. As Tower Lord, and therefore the queen’s appointed warden of this land, the frequency with which Vaelin was obliged to recapture the dregs of the Realm made him less than scrupulous in observing her royal edict against immediate execution.
“Another Bloody Sparrow?” Ellese asked.
“No.” Vaelin tossed away Jumin Vek’s cap to reveal a shock of thick, greasy hair. He grasped the man’s chin and turned it, revealing a more accomplished image inked into the sallow flesh of his neck. “The Damned Rats. They’re mostly disgraced former Realm Guard.”
“So we face two gangs today?”
“I doubt it. Lord Orven wiped out most of the Bloody Sparrows last winter. It seems the Rats found room for some survivors.”
He relieved the unfortunate Jumin Vek of his purse, finding it to contain two nuggets of gold along with a few bluestones.
“Your nose is bleeding, Uncle,” Ellese observed as he rose.
Vaelin took a rag from his belt, soaked it with a small bottle of corr tree oil and pressed it to the cut on his nose. He swallowed a grunt of pain as the concoction seeped its fiery way into the wound, unable to suppress the sense that it hadn’t stung quite so much in his youth.
“Fetch the others,” he told Ellese, dousing his face with water from his canteen to wash away the residual blood. “Meet me at the canyon’s edge. And, Ellese,” he added as she turned away. “The bluestones.”
He held out his hand, meeting her gaze until she gave a huff of annoyance and handed over the stones, griping in a low mutter, “You have me hunting scum for no pay.”
“Your mother sent you to me for an education. If you want paid work, there’s plenty to be had in the North Guard, or the mines. Until sold, under law bluestone and gold belong to the queen. You know that.” He pocketed the stones and jerked his head in dismissal. “On your way.”
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
It transpired that the outlaw camp was in fact a stockade formed of a semicircular enclosure arcing out from the eastern wall of a canyon known as Ultin’s Gulch. The place had been named in honour of the Reaches’ most famed miner, a man Vaelin remembered fondly from the Liberation War.
Ever a cheerful soul, Ultin had returned to the Reaches bearing the queen’s order to scrape all the wealth he could from the mines, thereby filling the royal coffers to meet the escalating costs of war. Honoured for his efforts as a Sword of the Realm with a generous accompanying pension, Ultin had politely refused Vaelin’s offer of a position as Lord Overseer of Mineworks. Instead, he retired to a smallholding near North Tower where, over the course of the next three years, he proceeded to drink himself to death. It was the war, my lord, his widow had told Vaelin the day they gave her husband’s body to the fire. All those murdered souls, murdered children. The men he lost at Alltor . . . all of it. He could never get it out of his head.
Vaelin spared a brief thought for Ultin’s memory before focusing his attention on the stockade. It was plainly new built, the timbers forming its defensive wall still green and unseasoned, although they seemed solid enough. The occupants had constructed a lookout post atop the canyon wall, providing a no doubt fine view of the surrounding landscape. Vaelin knew the ground to the east consisted of a half-mile-long expanse of bare rock, across which no attacking force could expect to approach undetected.
The canyon floor was similarly lacking in cover but also narrower, allowing for a rapid assault. Even so, he didn’t relish the prospect and found this new tactic of fortification troubling. Usually, the various outlaw and smuggling gangs would establish temporary camps deep in the forest or the more inaccessible crags from which they would raid the caravan routes. Now it appeared this particular group had opted for a permanent home. Are they getting bolder? he wondered. Or just more desperate.
He detected only the smallest sign of the Cumbraelin’s approach, just a faint scrape of buckskin on grass before the man appeared at his side, lying flat as Vaelin did.