NexLord: Dark Prophecies (47 page)

"No, I haven't altered him into some creature
and placed him in a box in the wagon, he is traveling with the
Bluecoats behind us on the road."

Lor leaned out and looked back down their
trail.

"I don't see any sign of them."

Mara smiled, "That's because you don't know
how to look.  I'll teach you that later
today.  We had to leave early..."

"You're telling me," Lor muttered.

"…because I want to stay ahead of the
Bluecoats," Mara explained.

Lor looked out over the rolling hills around
them.  This was grazing land, it was sparsely covered
with rocks and trees but the majority of it was covered with long
brown grass.  To their left the hills were rounded and
she couldn't see beyond the next hill, but to her right there was a
large plain with a mesa rising up five leagues
distant.  Jagged rocks showed around the top of the steep
sides just before the level area above.  To Lor it looked
like an ancient giant's jawbone, laying
on
the ground, the teeth pointed up to the sky.

Lor caught a glint of
metal
reflecting sunlight from the edge of the mesa.

"There is something on top of that hill, over
there," Lor pointed out the place to Mara.

The older woman squinted and held her hand at
her brow to shade her eyes.

"Yearl!” she called to the Willowman, who was
busy teaching Aerin horsemanship.

Aerin and the
lavender-skinned
man arrived, cantering their horses back
to Mara's position.

"Lor caught some movement from the top of
that
mesa
.  It would be
a good spy post. Why don't you get over there and see what there is
to
see?
  You can catch
up to us along the road."

Yearl nodded and started to turn his horse
toward the mesa, and Aerin made to follow, but Mara spoke up,
stopping them both, "Just Yearl, Aerin."

"How am I supposed to learn if you won't let
me ride?"

Mara ignored him and spoke to
Yearl.  "How is our young equestrian doing?"

Yearl smiled at Aerin's wide-eyed appeal to
speak well of him.  "He's not bad at all; I think he
could stay in his saddle during a ride."

Mara considered.  "All right,
Yearl, but you keep him out of mischief."

Yearl bowed from the waist in his saddle and
then headed them off at an angle away from the wagon, but not right
towards the mesa.  He didn't want to scare off the
watcher, whoever they were.

Aerin felt his heart pounding; this was more
like it!  He was off on an adventure with the mysterious
Willowman.  He pictured them finding a spy from the
Drakwolfs or some kind of bandit squad bent on highway
robbery. 

They rode slowly, using the trees for cover
to mask their approach.  Yearl explained each thing he
did, and why, so that Aerin would learn.  
Eventually,
they reached a set of rocks that
were near one end of the mesa.  At this
point,
they would have to expose themselves
occasionally, as they moved between the large rocks piled along the
base, but the place where Lor had seen the reflection was around
the corner, so Yearl thought it unlikely they would be
spotted.  The slope of the mesa was not as steep here, so
they could ride nearly to the top.

Aerin pictured a secret bandit camp on the
mesa and wondered how many they would run into when they got to the
top.

They started their climb up the increasing
slope toward the flat top above.  When they neared the
crest they had to get off their mounts and lead them by the bridle
between two large rocks that rimmed the crown of the
mesa. 

Once on top Aerin looked around for signs of
the bandits, or whoever else was up here.  The area was
much larger than he had
imagined
and went off into the distance a few miles.

Suddenly Yearl grabbed Aerin by the upper
arm.

"Wha..." Aerin started to say when he saw
what had grabbed Yearl's attention.

The blood drained out of Aerin's
face
as if there were holes in the bottom of
his feet.

On the other side of the Mesa, down below and
out of sight from the road, was a massive army of
Togroths.  Aerin tried to count, but in the end had to
guess at a few thousand.

"Come on, we're getting out of here!" Yearl
whispered, though the Togroths below would never hear him from this
many miles away.

"Aren't we going to see who was up here?"

"Togroths, or their masters," Yearl
noted.  "No need to let them see us now, it could set off
an attack.  Let's head back down and warn Mara."

Quickly Yearl led Aerin down the Mesa slope,
following their own tracks back toward the anonymity of the
trees.

When they caught up to the wagon Yearl wasted
no time.  "Mara, there is a Togroth army, of over
four thousand, on the other side of the Mesa!  They were
camped, but I estimate them only an hour ride from our
position."

Mara stopped the wagon and thought for a
moment.  "Tocor, Yearl, we're going
back.  Let's get this wagon off the road and out of
sight.  The kids will have to stay here until we can
return."

"You're going back!" Lor exclaimed.

"Yes, Gandarel has got to be warned, the Togs
were sent here to take him.  
Gedin save
us, I was sure they would be waiting in the
Eigen Pass."

"You EXPECTED to find the Togroths?" Dono
exclaimed.

Mara smiled sorrowfully, "It is all in the
Dark Prophecies, but I've got to remind myself that things can
change and details cannot be trusted.  I've fallen prey
to the same mistake others make in dealing with the prophecies,
people either don't believe them at
all
or take them word for word as truth.  They
are really only likely outcomes."

Once the wagon was off the
road
and hidden in a small glade fifty yards
away, Mara gave her students instructions.  "You stay put
until we return, if you don't see us by morning expect the worst,
and stay hidden for a time.  It is unlikely the Togs
would ride this direction if they have captured their prize, and
that is the only thing that would stop us from returning."

"Why can't we come back with you, Mara?"
Aerin asked his teacher.

Mara didn't answer immediately; she was busy
unhitching a third mount from the back of the
wagon.  "You're not quite ready yet,
Aerin.  This could easily turn into a battle, and I don't
want to have to worry about all of you. And besides, we don’t have
enough horses for all of you, and the wagon is too slow."

"What about you?" Katek asked, as soon as he
heard the word 'battle' he had become
interested.  "Battle is no place for the elderly."

Mara fixed him with a withering
stare.  "Katek, just because my body is old, doesn’t mean
I can't out think them.  A day will come when you
understand the power of knowledge."

"Still, wouldn't it be better to have our
strength around you while you think?"

Mara mounted her steed and looked down at
Katek, who stood by the left stirrup looking up at
her.  "Excellent point, Katek, except I have Tocor and
Yearl, and they are more than enough protection for an old woman's
body.  Besides, I have a few tricks that even you don't
know about.  Now do as I say, we'll be back soon."

With that, Mara,
Tocor,
and Yearl trotted their horses toward the road
away from the watching students.

"That's just great," Katek
noted.  "We train for battle, we learn to control our
fear, and when the time comes for battle, we're left here with the
wagon.  This just cuts."

Aerin agreed with him, but he was too deep in
thought to comment.  Some of what Mara had just told them
didn't strike him as the complete story.  It wasn't as if
he felt that she was lying, but there were half-truths mixed in, he
could feel it.  Unbidden, the doubts put there by the
Dreadmaster came back to him and he heard that terrible voice
replay in his mind, 
She does my
work.
   There was no doubt in Aerin that Mara
was keeping something from them; he just hoped she had sufficient
reason.

Dono was gazing off toward the mesa, though
it was hidden from view by the bushy trees of the
glade.  "I don't understand something."

Aerin noted Dono's gaze and went over to his
friend.  "What is it that you don't understand?"

"Togroths... Mara told us that they
would leave the siege because they didn't have supplies, yet they
are camped out here in the wilderness, too far from the city fields
to forage for food.  What are they eating?"

That made them all pause for a
moment.  Aerin thought back to his view of the Togroth
encampment from on top of the mesa.  There had been a
square shape near the center of the camp, like a fenced in
area.

"I saw a kind of corral in the middle,
perhaps they have livestock," Aerin noted.

"Where would they get livestock out here?"
Katek pondered, "There might be an occasional wild horse
herd
or some stray cattle, but
enough to feed all of those Togs?"

"Togs eat people," Dono noted, voicing a
thought the others had entertained, but not mentioned due to its
horror.

Aerin suddenly nodded, it was the missing
piece.  "That's it; the corral had high sides, higher
than any four-legged creature would need.  They have
humans in there for their meals."

Lor shuddered.  "The poor fools, to
know you were on the dinner menu for those creatures,
ug
."

"We've got to do something," Aerin
decided.

"Whoa, who said anything about 'doing'
something!  There are thousands of those things," Lor
exclaimed.

“Come on, Aerin, you and I can sneak in and
get those people free,” Katek decided, going to the wagon to fetch
weapons.

Lor scowled at their large friend, pulling at
her lower lip
unconsciously
.  “If you think I’m going to let
you take Aerin away to be killed, so that I have to explain it to
Mara, you’re crazier than I thought,” Lor exclaimed in a loud
enough voice for Katek to hear in the wagon.

“So what are you going to do about it, girl?”
Katek said, poking his head out of the back of the wagon.

One of Lor’s leather juggling balls hit him
square in the forehead.  Katek was so surprised he fell
into the wagon, his head disappearing from the view of the
others.

“Ow, you’ll pay for that!” he yelled from
inside.

Lor grinned.  “The answer to your
poorly worded question is that I’m going along to make sure Aerin
isn’t killed.”

Dono shook his head in
disbelief.  “And if you think I’m staying here to face
Mara alone, you’re both crazy.”

Aerin smiled, noting how his friends had just
talked themselves into the rescue mission.  “All right
then, we will all go.  What’s our plan?”  Aerin
asked.

Lor poked him in the chest with her
finger.  “This is entirely your fault, and since you are
the only one who has seen the Togroth camp, I guess it is up to you
to come up with the brilliant plan.”

“How is it my fault?  Never mind,”
he added hastily as Lor opened her mouth to start
in.  “I’ll accept the blame, for now.  OK, here
is the plan…”

“Suddenly he has a plan,” Lor noted.

Aerin gave her a contrived look of
hurt.  “Hey, you asked me to come up with one, now don’t
complain when I do!  I suggest we climb back to the top
of the mesa and take a detailed look at the
situation.  From there we can make further plans.”

Lor tossed another leather ball at Aerin, who
caught it handily and tossed it back.  Without even
seeming to catch it Lor made the ball disappear somewhere into her
clothing.  “That’s your plan?  It seems to me that
you just sidestepped the issue.  This way we’ll have to
help you plan once we see what you have seen.”

“Hey, I didn’t get that good a look; we need
to study this before we’ll know if there is some way to save
them.  Besides, I never really saw the people; we could
be getting into danger for some cattle.”

Katek tossed a pile of weapons he had brought
from the wagon in front of them.  “I say we go with
Aerin’s plan and get moving.  If we just keep discussing
this we won't even get up there before dark.”

“Agreed,” Dono said, picking up a sword and
hefting it for balance.

The others started
stowing
weapons about their persons as well.

It took them two hours to walk to the mesa
and another half-hour to climb to the top.  They were
dusty, and a little tired, when they finally crested the summit
onto the plateau.

“OK, keep low and follow me,” Aerin
explained, heading them for the southern edge of the mesa where
they could look down on the Togroths.

Half way to the edge Aerin suddenly paused
when he heard movement from off to their right.  He used
hand motions to signal his friends to be silent and stop
moving.  Again there was the sound of twigs snapping and
a scuffle, as two Togroths came out of the bushes, headed for the
sloped end of the mesa where they could climb down.

Upon suddenly seeing the four frozen youths
before them the two Togs stopped, their red eyes squinting under
the bony brows for a moment. 

Before they could move Katek
leaped
at one of them, swinging his sword in an
arc designed to hack the nearest one in the thick neck. 

With a snort of surprise, the Tog struck at
the swinging blade, deflecting it from Katek's intended
target.  The sharp blade cut into the Tog's arm, and it
opened its black-toothed
maw
to
bellow in rage.

Aerin jabbed the end of his quarterstaff into
the beast's throat, cutting off the scream before it had a chance
to emerge full force.

Katek saw Aerin's blow, and expected it to
stun the creature momentarily, so he stepped in closer to ram his
sword into its chest, but the Tog had other
ideas.  
Its
bloody left
arm swept up with blinding speed and caught Katek under the right
side of his chin.  Katek flew
backward
into the brush, from the impact of the thick
hairy arm.