Joel Shepherd - Tracato

She pulled back on the reins to stop the grey mare from charging too far ahead of those riders fanning on her left. To the right, more riders formed their position by looking to her. Another fence, which she jumped, and then they were slowing further to ride amongst the trees.

She allowed the mare her head, weaving between trunks, supplying only a general direction while ducking the branches. The mare was not as large as some lowlands warhorses-she was elur’uhd , a Saalshen breed of stamina and swiftness combined. The talmaad did not fight as humans would, and had little use for animals built like battering rams of muscle and hide. It was dark under the canopy of leaves, and the gloom and speed combined to play tricks on her eyes…but if it was difficult for her, it would be doubly so for the bandits.

Rhillian tore through undergrowth, skirted an impenetrable tangle of roots and brush, and dug in her heels as the mare showed uncertainty, tossing her head. She turned onto what she decided was the straighter course, and heard a scream from ahead. Suddenly there was a horse and rider before her, a brown tunic and hood of smallfolk’s dress over mail, a sword in hand. Left-handed, Rhillian saw, swinging her mare to the left and cutting past his weakside before he could adjust. Her backhand tore through mail on his back, and he fell with a scream, crashing into tree roots.

Now there were more horses ahead, plunging through the trees, rearing, wheeling in desperation. One man held a shield with two arrows in it, even as a third took his companion in the eye. Rhillian reined past another rider, slumped with a shaft in his throat, and galloped toward another yet unfeathered. He saw her and raised his shield and blade to greet her with a cry, and was promptly cut from the saddle by a third rider who flashed past his side. Rhillian paused and circled to look around, but it seemed to be over, the few remaining bandits yielding with desperate cries for mercy, throwing aside their blades. Rhillian did not need to give orders. Her talmaad knew what to do, and closed in on all sides to take prisoners.

She urged the mare to the side of the rider who had flashed by and deprived her of another victim. Aisha sat astride near where the prisoners were being herded and searched for weapons. Her naked blade remained in hand, ready to ride down any others who tried to run or fight. None looked likely to try. Clearly these understood the nature of their opposition, for there was terror in their eyes and cringing obedience in every posture.

“That was a lovely cut,” Rhillian complimented her friend. “Your horsemanship remains superior to mine, despite my practice.”

“City girl,” Aisha said, which explained everything. “You’ll not rid yourself of me that easily.”

“More’s the pity.” Aisha had completed her journey from Enora to Elisse barely ten days ago, to retake her accustomed place at Rhillian’s side. Rhillian was delighted to see her again, and even more delighted that her wounds suffered in Petrodor had healed so completely. But, in part, she still wished that Aisha had remained safely in Enora with her family, and had not come here to Rhodaani-occupied Elisse, and the newest front in the latest chapter of the never-ending series of wars that was the Bacosh.

Arendelle arrived at Rhillian’s other side, his bow in hand. “Three escaped,” he told her. “Gian and Leshelle are after them, I don’t expect they’ll get far.”

“No,” Rhillian agreed. Gian was the second-best archer Rhillian had ever seen. He alone would probably have done. “A good ambush.”

Arendelle shrugged. “They rode straight into us. If all irregulars are this clueless, we shall be done with them in weeks.”

Rhillian did not reply, lips pursed, watching her talmaad disarming the terrified prisoners. Men-at-arms in smallfolk clothes, she thought. Their armour gave them away, and their horse skills. Cavalry fighting was a rich man’s sport in the Bacosh, or the sport of those in their pay. Someone was trying to scare the true smallfolk into not helping the invaders, again. It was a predictable horror, and she was growing thoroughly sick of it.

They escorted the prisoners the short distance back to the village, not bothering to tie more than their hands behind their backs. It was almost an invitation to any who might think to try to run. Prisoners were useful, but not essential, and Rhillian was certain she could do without whichever of their number might think to try the accuracy of mounted serrin archers. Half a year ago, such thinking might have disturbed her. That was before Petrodor, and the War of the King. Now, the fate of a few murdering bandit prisoners barely troubled her at all.

The countryside in spring was beautiful, with hills and pasture slopes alive with wildflowers. Ploughed fields made a patchwork of brown against the green, with little huts for shepherds and farmers clinging to the rickety fencelines, beneath the shade of grand oaks.

The village itself was not so beautiful. Little more than a huddled mass of tumbledown shanties, small mud walls clustered as if for warmth, thatched roofs in various states of disrepair. Some goats, roped to a stake, made a meal of garden refuse, and geese honked and waddled away from the massed hooves approaching. Even the village dogs looked dispirited, running away with tails low and without so much as a bark. This was the land of a certain Lord Crashuren, Rhillian had learned, and these villagers owned nothing. Not even their pathetic little homes.

Further along the main “street,” muddy with recent rain, they came upon the scene of the bandits’ work, before Rhillian’s party had arrived. Truthfully, there wasn’t much to destroy. But there were doors and window shutters broken, precious clay pots smashed on the ground, and equally precious white flour strewn across the mud. And other, equally senseless destruction.

In a small, muddy square fronting a little stone temple lay five human bodies. Three were men of fighting age, but one was a lad of perhaps twelve, and the other a girl several years older. About the little square, doors were opening, fearful folk peering out to see the strange, wild-haired serrin dismounting about a cluster of eight human prisoners. Ahead, the temple door was guarded by a rough, balding man with a hoe. But others were seeing it safe, and two women pushed the man aside, and rushed to the square to resume their sobbing over the bodies of the dead. More joined them, and suddenly there were perhaps fifty gathering about, some men armed with makeshift weapons.

Rhillian stepped forward and stared down at the bodies. Their throats had been cut. Even the youngsters. She looked up and beckoned the rough man with the hoe forward. He came, and she realised his anxiousness was not fear, but rather deference. His gait was bent and he did not look her in the eye, but placed the hoe on the mud before her and knelt. Rhillian refrained from exasperation, and took his arm, gently, pulling him back to his feet. He might have been fifty, she saw, with a rugged face and very few teeth. More likely, she knew, he was about thirty.

“Do you speak Larosan?” Rhillian asked him in that tongue. A nervous shake of the head. “Aisha.”

Aisha came forward, small, blonde and pretty. The man bowed to her too. “What happened here?” Rhillian asked him, and Aisha repeated it in Elissian.

“A Rhodaani man came to ask what they’d seen, of soldiers and the like,” Aisha translated his answer. A scout, then. “He thinks someone must have told Lord Crashuren, and that’s why the bandits attacked them.”

Whether they’d actually told the scout anything useful, Rhillian noted, the man had not said. All the countryside was like this, paralysed with fear, of either side. Of men with swords in general.