Raptor (25 page)

“Damned or not, Optio, that is precisely what you are to do. When we three find the Hun’s landing place, we cannot take time to come back and collect you. We must pursue him as closely as we can. Then, afterward—whatever happens—if we return at all, we will be in a headlong hurry. We must know exactly where the horses are, and they must
be
right here, and so must the barges and their polers. Do you imagine those dockside drudges—knowing that there are savage Huns somewhere in this vicinity—would obligingly wait here for us without someone to
make
them wait? You are the only one who can do that, and do it you will.”

Fabius continued to argue and demand and cajole—reasonably, bitterly, angrily, piteously by turns—while Wyrd and I prepared to leave, but Wyrd did not trouble to refute or even reply to any of his plaints. I took my belted short-sword from where it hung on Velox’s saddle horn, and buckled that about my waist, and tucked my sling also into the belt where it would be handy, and, with my juika-bloth on my shoulder, I was ready to go. Wyrd belted on his short-handled ax, and arranged his war bow and quiver of arrows behind his shoulder. Little Becga had nothing to do but hand over the horses’ reins to Fabius, who finally, reluctantly, resignedly ceased his pleading and said only, “Ave, Uiridus, atque vale.”

“Te morituri salutamus,” Wyrd said, not entirely ironically, and beckoned for me and Becga to follow him.

I was amazed by Wyrd’s ability to lead us through the enveloping darkness and the dense riverside brush, keeping us always close beside the water without any of us ever falling into it. Despite the heavy going and the fast pace that Wyrd set, he made his way almost silently, and somehow traced a path that enabled me and Becga to follow him not much more noisily, though after a while I was nearly having to drag the poor feeble little charismatic like a sack behind me. And after our having been quite frozen during the river crossing, we were now so arduously exercised that we sweated beneath our woods clothing.

I have no idea how long or how far we traveled, but it was not a matter of hours or miles. The Hun messenger must have had almost as many men poling his vessel as ours had had, for his also had crossed without much deflection by the current, and had landed well upstream of Basilea. Only when, in the dark, I bumped into Wyrd’s back did I realize that he had espied the beached boat and stopped still. Peering over his shoulder, I could make out a rough-hewn scow that had been pulled up from the water, well into the concealing brush, and I could see that it was empty. We three stood motionless, trying not to pant or even to breathe, while Wyrd listened and looked all about. At last, he put a hand on my chest, indicating that Becga and I should stay where we were, and he disappeared into the darkness as silently and completely as a shadow. After another while, he just as magically reappeared in front of me, and whispered:

“They seem to have left no guards. Help me shove the scow back into the stream—and quietly, quietly.”

Of course, that could not be done entirely without sound; the vessel was much too heavy for us to lift, and our shoving it over the bankside ground made much scraping noise. But I realized why we were doing that. When—or if—we crossed the river again in our barges, the Huns would be hampered in their pursuit of us. Anyway, when we had got the scow launched, and seen it drift away, slowly revolving on the current, no Hun had yet materialized to challenge us. So Wyrd said without whispering, but still in a guarded voice:

“I followed their trail a little way. They were in too much of a hurry to take great precaution against leaving tracks. And from their hurry, I judge that they knew they had not too far to go. We cannot move as fast—we
must
be cautious and quiet—but we should come upon their lair well before morning light. You and the eunuch stay as far behind me as you can without losing me entirely. There may yet be sentries posted along the way, and there certainly will be some picketed around the perimeter of their camp. When you see or hear me halt, you two freeze stone-still.”

The Huns must have supposed themselves entirely free of pursuers, because, as Wyrd had commented, they would have expected no one to seek them in the lowlands. At any rate, we came upon no guards along the trail. The first and only time that Wyrd paused that night was when he—and Becga and I, too—saw beyond the trees a dim red glow that might have been the first pale flush of dawn, except that it was in the north. Wyrd, however, well out ahead of us, saw something that Becga and I did not. He slid silently sideways into some trees, so we two hunkered down where we were. I heard a distant and momentary small noise, as of a brief scuffle among the dry bushes, and then Wyrd reappeared where we had last seen him, waving an arm to summon us to join him.

When we did, we found him bending over a Hun who lay dead on the ground, and Wyrd was loosing his own war bow from around the neck of the corpse, for he had throttled the man with his bowstring. Wyrd said nothing, and neither did we, and all together we crept toward the red glow. It gradually brightened as we got nearer to it, and finally outlined for us a hilltop crested with trees, among which we could discern no other lurking sentries. So, on hands and knees, we climbed the low hill and, toward its top, we lay flat on our bellies and crawled like beetles.

When we breasted the crown of the hill, we were looking down into a dale nearly barren of trees and lighted by a number of campfires. The trees had been felled, as we could see by the firelight, for the makeshift construction of a few crude huts, and those were encircled by a number of mean, patchwork hide tents. At the farther side of the dale was a picket line of tethered horses, all of them gaunt and shaggy scrubs. And moving about in the clearing, even at this hour, were some twoscore persons. Since Wyrd, Becga and I were more than a hundred paces above and distant from the camp, I could not tell, by the people’s ragged and shabby dress, which were men and which women. But, from their stunted stature and bandy legs, they all were unmistakably Huns.

“The woman and boy will be together, and in one of those huts. Easier for their captors to guard them that way.” Wyrd had edged over beside me so he could speak quietly into my ear. “You keep watch, and see if there is any indication of which hut they occupy. I have more killing to do.”

I said, “I have seen you shoot arrows with incredible rapidity and accuracy, but surely there are too many Huns down there for you to—”

“Ja. Still, the very number of them may later prove to be to our advantage. I shall only be killing the other sentries roundabout, and I must do that while it is full night. Meantime, you plaster your face and hands with mud, so they do not shine so. Yours and the eunuch’s. At least you two will pass as Huns in the dark, if necessary, which I cannot, with this beard.”

“What do you mean—if necessary?”

“I mean in case I do not return. Should one of the sentries catch me before I catch him, there will be some uproar attendant on my dying. In that commotion, you two may be able to make your escape unnoticed. Or even proceed with the rescue attempt, if you can devise some way to do it.”

“Iésus!” I gasped. “I hope I do not have to try.”

“So do I,” Wyrd said drily, and wriggled away.

With my sword, I dug up and crumbled some clods of earth, then poured a dollop of water from my flask and made mud. I coated Becga’s face with it, and he mine, and that sufficiently dirtied our hands as well. We were not exactly Hun-colored when we got done, but we were much less visible. Then I told Becga to keep a lookout behind and about, lest some vagrant Hun stumble upon us, and I concentrated on watching the encampment.

Time passed—what seemed to me a great deal of time—but nothing in the nature of an uproar erupted anywhere beyond the dale, and the activity down there continued to appear placid enough. Then I and the juika-bloth on my shoulder started in unison as Becga tapped my back to warn me of someone’s approach. I could almost have sobbed with grateful relief when it turned out to be Wyrd.

“There were five more,” he said into my ear as he stretched out beside me. “That would be about the usual guard roster for an encampment of this size, so I can hope that I have got them all.”

I only gazed at him in wide-eyed admiration—this old man had silently and efficiently slain six armed, alert, murderous savages, and he was not even panting from the exertion—until he said with some impatience, “Well? What occurs here?”

I pointed and said, “At most of the huts, there have been at least one or two persons going in and out through their door flaps. But that one yonder, farthest from us—the hut backed up against the hill opposite—the hide flap has been lifted just once, and from inside. A Hun leaned out but did not emerge—a female, I think it was—and handed some kind of bowl to another Hun who was passing by. That one filled it with coals from one of the fires and returned it to the female, and she took it inside and has not opened the flap again.”

“A brazier to keep the prisoners comfortable,” said Wyrd. “And the hut farthest from the approach route. That has to be the one. Good work, urchin. Let us make our way around to that hill behind it.”

Wyrd having already once made the circuit of the dale, and with no guards to impede us—we passed two of them, lying inert—we were able to proceed fairly rapidly along the heights surrounding the clearing. Nevertheless, the night was well along by now, and I thought I could detect a faint lightening of the sky in the east. Atop the low hill behind the selected hut, we three again lay down and regarded the scene below.

None of the ramshackle huts had a back door flap or any window openings. Of this one, all we could see was the rear wall of slovenly cut limbs and branches, standing more or less upright but leaning untidily this way and that, and above the wall a roof of nothing but piled brush. Both in front and back of the hut, an occasional Hun went by on some errand or another—carrying wood for the fires or armloads of torn-up dry grass for the horses.

Wyrd said, as if thinking aloud, “I doubt that there is more than one woman in there, guarding the captives. The chief of the band and his best warriors and the newly returned messenger will all be elsewhere, in one or more of the other huts, discussing and celebrating the garrison’s surrender of ransom. But let us make sure. Urchin, give me your eagle to hold. You go down there and sneak a look through the gaps in that hut wall.”

“What? But there are Huns going back and forth.”

“As I said, there is sometimes safety in numbers. These Huns cannot all know every other of them at a glance, at least not in the dark. Simply walk bowlegged and, if you meet one, grumble, ‘Aruv zerko kara.’ In the Hunnish tongue that means, more or less, ‘What a skeity foul night.’ “

“But this has been quite a clement night.”

“To the Huns, all things are foul. Move.”

Not with great enthusiasm, I slithered on my belly down the low hillside, then waited until no one was about before I stood up and sauntered toward the hut. One Hun did come along, burdened with a tangle of leather harness, and to him I said, in the hoarsest voice I could manage, “Aruv zerko kara.” He grunted back only, “Vakh!”—which sounded as if he agreed with me—and kept on going. I sidled close along the hut wall and peered in through one of the many chinks. The brazier glowing within gave enough light for me to see at least the number of occupants. When I had, without incident, returned to lie down again between Wyrd and Becga, I reported:

“Ja, fráuja, only the one woman Hun—if it is a woman—awake and tending the coals. There are two other figures, one woman-sized, one smaller, seated and swaddled in furs and evidently asleep, but they do not seem to be bound or shackled. There is very little else to be seen in there—a water jar, some mats, no more. And the hut is no impregnable prison. The wall’s sticks are held upright and together only by magpie bits and pieces of thong. I could easily cut my way inside, except that the guardian woman would instantly screech an alarm.”

“Perhaps she would not, if her attention was bent on something else. I notice that these people are extremely careless of the sparks from their fires, and this hollow seems to catch some wind and swirl it about. The Huns will suppose it to be only an accident when one of those other huts’ roof brush catches fire, but it ought to cause some turmoil. You and the eunuch get back down there. Walk about, but never far from the prison hut, and wait for me to arrange the turmoil.”

“We dare not wait too long,” I cautioned. “The day is coming perceptibly upon us.”

“Vái! Since I do not look as Hun-like as you two, I cannot so easily stroll about, but I will be as quick as I can. Anyway, as soon as the camp is in confusion, here is what you are to do.” He gave us our instructions in very few words, set my eagle again on my shoulder, and then he was gone, circling toward a different side of the clearing.

As bidden, Becga and I slid down the hill, then quite brazenly stood up and ambled about—now both of us walking bowlegged—back and forth behind the hut. Twice a Hun passed us, and each time I growled, “Aruv zerko kara,” and got the same grunted “Vakh!” in reply, but neither man gave even my juika-bloth a second look. Becga as usual said nothing, but each time screwed up his muddy face in disgust at the repellent body smell wafted by the passing man. Because the little charismatic never
had
said a word in my hearing, and because his apathy had for so long continued undisturbed, and because he did now at least demonstrate a distaste for the Huns, I feared he might take this last chance to bolt for freedom, so I kept tight hold of his upper arm.

The light in the clearing beyond the hut suddenly became a much brighter red, and I briefly heard the crackling noise of brush on fire. Then that noise was drowned by a loud cacophony of shouts—“Vakh!” audible among them, in several voices—and the pounding of running feet. I swiftly drew my short-sword and hauled Becga to the hut’s back wall and peered again through a crack. The Hun woman inside moved from the brazier to the door flap, lifted it and looked out. Over her shoulder I could see a confusion of running figures and, above them, the roof of a hut across the dale burning merrily. As quietly but quickly as possible, I began slashing the thongs that held the hut wall together, and yanking away the pieces of wood as they came loose.