Broken Crossroads (Knights of the Shadows Book 1) (6 page)

She abandoned her blade in her foe and sprinted for the cover of the woods. Her two remaining assailants made slithering turns on the path and followed.

She wasn't deserting Conn, she told herself. She was no warrior, and to stand beside him and fight back to back, two against five, would be suicide. By luring some of his foes away, she might give him the chance to defeat the remainder, while she lost or bested the others by trickery.

She had a decent lead, but not enough to disappear. She raced through the dappled light, dodging around trees, waiting for an opportunity.

As she ran, she drew a slim throwing knife from her left sleeve. As a performing acrobat, she had learned to hit a mark the size of a copper penny at twenty paces. She turned, spied her enemies a dozen steps behind, and made a throwing motion with her empty left hand. As the first man ducked, she whipped her right hand out sidearm, sending the narrow blade into his body. He stumbled and the second man plowed into him from behind, sending both tumbling on the forest floor.

Trilisean took the chance to dart out of view and swing up onto a low branch. She climbed up into the spreading arms of the tree. She heard the groans of the first man and his companion's attempts to aid him. She crept quietly along the branch, stepping into an adjacent tree and working her way to the far side of it.

She repeated the process, moving some distance from her pursuers before dropping lightly to the ground. She paused in the shadow of a massive forked trunk, listening for any sound of the bandits. Hearing none, she stood, looked with distaste at the sap on her hands, and began to walk back toward the trail, which was…

That way?
She wondered.

* * *

Conn heard a crunching step in the undergrowth that could only be a man. He reacted with instincts honed by years of planning and avoiding ambushes back in the Aerendish forests.

He shouted a warning, ducked and swung his pack off his shoulders. A thrown hatchet whirred past his ear and a dagger struck the pack as he slung it to the ground. He had time to turn and poise his spear as three men charged him with bared blades.

He stepped to the outside of the rightmost foe to avoid being surrounded, and batted aside the brigand's cut with the haft of his spear. He spun, bringing the butt end of the spear around to connect with his assailant's head just behind the ear as he continued past.

The bandit sprawled like a loosely tied sack. Conn saw Trilisean evade her enemy's grasp and head for the trees with two thugs in pursuit. He just had time to decide that a betting man would place his money on the lady before the two remaining foes rushed him.

Again, he stepped to his right, engaging one of the advancing enemy. This one drove a short thrusting sword at Conn's breast. The Aeransman swept the blade aside with the shaft of his spear and brought the point into line, thrusting the sharpened steel spearhead into his enemy's body. The bandit's momentum carried him forward onto the weapon. The point burst, glistening crimson, from between his shoulder blades.

Conn released the spear, hopelessly embedded as it was, and whipped out his dirk with his left hand as the final brigand swung an axe at his head. He managed to deflect the blow, if only just, and the flat of the axe glanced against his shoulder.

Conn pulled out his sword, parrying another blow with his dirk, and circled to his left, just for variety. The bandit cut at his head, but Conn parried with his sword and slashed at the man's neck as he stepped past.

The brigand was a brawler, not a fencer, and could not recover from his cut in time to defend against the mercenary's blow. Conn felt his blade sigh through flesh and grate on bone as he drew it through the man's throat. The bandit took a few more stumbling steps before he fell, all but decapitated.

Conn whirled, panting, looking for more threats. He saw only the four fallen bandits and Trilisean's dropped pack.

He listened carefully for sounds of pursuit or struggle, but all was quiet. He shrugged, telling himself again that a wise man would give odds to the thief, and began to examine the fallen.

* * *

Trilisean considered her situation. She had come from that way…or had she? What was it, moss grew on the North side of trees? Anyway, the rays of the setting sun would be coming from the west, so that meant…

What did that mean? All she knew for certain was that she was somewhere south of Laimrig. She was fairly certain they'd been traveling southeast, more or less, when she left the trail. But then she had made a number of twists and turns to evade her pursuers.

She felt a quiver like a small furry creature stirring beneath her breastbone. Fathered by fear and born of helplessness, it clawed rat-like at her stomach. Her breath came faster as she looked frantically about. All she could see was trees and undergrowth, melding into a mottled grey-green distance. Sounds of birds and beast echoed through the endless woods, the wind sighing through the branches of the trees which supported the high, green ceiling like chaotic columns in a vast, overgrown cathedral to a mad god.

Her pulse raced. As far back as she could remember, she could read the city like a book. The feel of each neighborhood, the cobbles and architecture would tell her all she needed to know. At worst, she could take to the rooftops for shelter and a vantage. Here, she could not read the sounds and smells. She could see the difference in varieties of plants and trees, but what that meant was lost on her. Years of relying on her finely honed senses increased her frustration and cold, growing horror as none of the information that those senses supplied her meant anything.

She had spent years learning the rules of society, and of people. Rules both formal and unspoken, and while she had honored them as much in the breach as the observance, they were her strength. She survived because she could read the city and its people. For all that poets call the city a wilderness of stone and mortar, it was a thing of men, and obeyed the rules of men.

The forest had no rules. Her heart hammered in her chest. The fearful creature threatened to claw its way up her throat and escape in a scream.

She forced it down by a concentrated act of will. There were certainly rules, she told herself. She simply didn't know them. Fortunately, she had brought someone who did. She muzzled her fear by insisting that Conn would see them through. She refused to allow herself even the suspicion that he was killed or captured, knowing that the anxious beast within would smell her doubt and rage free again.

All I need to do,
she told herself with exaggerated calm
, is to find Conn. Or help him find me.

How to do that, she wondered.

A dark, cynical part of her replied,
Stand in a clearing and make noises like a pint of stout.

* * *

Conn examined the fallen. Two were dead, one busy dying, moaning and writhing on the spear through his middle, and the fourth was unconscious.

He checked on the unconscious brigand. The man was out, his breath coming in ragged snores, his pupils sluggish when the Aeransman pried back an eyelid. He tied the man's wrists, then propped him against a tree in a sitting position, his head hanging between his knees. If he recovered, maybe he would answer some questions.

After that, he knelt beside the dying bandit. The man's eyes were closed, and he was breathing in shallow, gasping moans. The spear had entered his belly and a foot of it stood out his back. A pool of blood and worse spread around him. No man could survive a wound like that, but he could take a long time dying.

Conn drew his dirk. He placed his left hand over the bandit's eyes, holding his head steady. He put the point of his blade against the side of the man's neck. The bandit whimpered and writhed at the touch.

“Easy, lad,” Conn whispered, “just a little pinch now.” He quickly slid his dirk forward in a short, slicing

thrust. As the bright blood poured forth, the bandit quivered for a moment then lay still.

He stood, cleaned his blade and then set about freeing his spear.

As soon as Trilisean found her way back…

He stopped and considered. How well did she know the forest? He had grown to think of her as perfectly capable, but did her expertise extend to navigation in the woods?

He had no doubt she'd lose her pursuers. That wasn't quite true, a nagging worry for her safety troubled him, but he didn't allow it into his conscious mind. But after she lost them, could she find her way back? Well, he could help her there.

* * *

Trilisean crouched on the balls of her feet in the shadow of a huge tree. She thought it might be an oak. Or an elm. It had leaves instead of needles, at any rate. She held herself motionless, watching and listening and smelling the forest. There had to be clues. Signs of her pursuers, something.

Then faintly, she heard the sound of singing. A melancholy tune, about a man led astray by a beautiful woman who plied him with drink. Lyrics at once bitter, sentimental and terribly, terribly off key. A song that could only be sung by an Aeransman.

She rolled her eyes.
Only Conn.

Her lips twisted in a smirk and she glided off in the direction of the singing.

* * *

Conn scoured at his spear with a swath of leaves filled with sand, keeping an eye on the forest while he bellowed the second refrain.

“Her eyes, they shone like diamonds–”

A copper penny sailed from the shadows off the trail to land at his feet.

“Move along to the next corner, my good man,” smiled Trilisean as she stepped into view. “You're putting the chipmunks off their feed.”

“You wound me, Madame,” he replied gravely. “Good to see you back.”

“Good to be seen. You're unhurt?”

“Aye. You're all in one piece?” he asked, looking her over to make sure.

She nodded. Then her eyebrows came together in recognition as she looked over the brigand bodies. “That's Twitch.”

“Twitch?”

“Small time muscle. Worked off and on for a few different moneylenders. Don't know his real name. Everyone called him ‘Twitch' because…” she shrugged, “well, because he had a twitch.”

She knelt and began to systematically search the fallen.

Conn could sense the wheels turning as she tried to puzzle out why a loan shark's enforcer would be out robbing travelers on a disused forest trail. “Any of these others look familiar?”

She shook her head. “They look like outsiders. Probably local bandits hired by Twitch for two marks apiece.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Well, they look dirtier and worse fed than Twitch, their gear is patchwork and homespun, not like they'd get in a city, and they each have two silver marks on them. Here,” she tossed him a handful of coins. “There's your half.”

Conn caught the silver and slipped it into his pouch. “If our friend here wakes up, he may be able to tell us what they were doing out here.”

He squatted down to look at the bound man. Still breathing deep and regular, no response to slapping. Conn was about to comment when he heard Trilisean unleash a storm of curses.

“Easy, lass! That's the mouth you bite coins with, remember?”

“The slimy, greedy bastard,” she snarled more quietly.

“What's troubling you?” he asked, not turning away from his prisoner. “Is old Twitch selfishly being difficult about his gold tooth?”

“He had a copy of our map.”

Conn swung around. “What?”

“A copy.” She waved a folded parchment sheet as evidence. “The same bleeding map that two faced, six chinned fence gave me.” She glared for a moment, then continued. “Maybe it wasn't him.”

“Who else knew about the map?” asked Conn.

“Vaigh, but I doubt he'd go through the trouble of getting a good copy made, and he doesn't have the skill himself. And Fayl's client, of course. He could have shopped it out to several people. But that's sloppy, unless he knew who he could trust. I don't know if there are others.”

“Maybe Vaigh sold his copy to this Twitch.”

“I suppose.” She chewed her lip in thought. “In any case, if there is one copy out there, there could be a dozen. Every semi-professional cutpurse and second story artist in Laimrig could be after the same thing we are. You realize what this means?”

“There could be more groups who'll try to remove the competition by killing us.”

“Yes, yes, of course,” she said dismissively. “More to the point, they could get there ahead of us and loot the place clean.”

“So long as we have our priorities in order.”

The surviving bandit showed no sign of reviving,

“What do you want to do with him?” Conn asked.

Trilisean shrugged. “He's hired muscle. He wouldn't know anything. Twitch never would have told him more than he had to. He’s n ot much of a threat, all alone. If he does wake up, he'll most likely just run.”

“No point wasting this valuable lesson by cutting his throat then?”