The Gully Snipe (The Dual World Book 1) (20 page)

He stopped struggling against the knots when he realized the bear was watching him. The bear grunted slightly, drawing the attention of the dark-haired man. The man’s clothes were poor, poorer even than Gully’s — a simple, dirt-colored tunic and breeches with a thick leather belt. He glared at Gully, glanced back to the bear and said, “We must end this threat before others take away the opportunity, Raybb.”

He pulled a long knife from his belt and stepped towards Gully. Gully began struggling again, fearful and wide-eyed at the situation in which he had found himself.

Gully pleaded, “Wait, I know not what sort of threat you think me to be! I am merely making my way through the forest and am all alone. I’m not even armed. I’m as harmless as a pip mouse!”

The man stopped and said, “Hmmm...” He pulled Gully’s throwing knife from another spot in his belt and held it up. “So, I suppose you then claim to be ignorant of this knife you had in your boot, do you? I find that hard to believe, which means you are a liar. In fact, I’m willing to wager you’re very accomplished with a throwing knife like this one.” He turned to the bear and said, “You see, Raybb? Deceit and perfidy!”

Gully was about to attempt some sort of explanation, but before he could, there was another voice coming up behind him and the sound of running footsteps.

The voice called, “’Cender! Stop! You must not do this!”

The dark haired man frowned and scowled harshly at the bear. He told it, “When this ends badly, Raybb, it will be your fault!”

Two men came running around the tree, looking at Gully as they did so. Both men were also dark haired, although the smaller one had a little gray starting to appear. The other man was very large and dangerous looking, but he appeared to be several years younger. The larger man, instead of breeches and in spite of his imposing mien, wore what looked like a loose skirt that came down just below his bare knees and above his boots. The smaller man wore regular breeches instead of the skirt.

The one called ’Cender, the knife still gripped tightly in his hands, said to the new arrivals, “You have no authority in this matter, Exoutur!” He then said to the larger man, “And do not think you’ll escape discipline for involving my brother when you were specifically ordered not to, Raybb!”

“Encender! This is madness!” said the smaller man named Exoutur, breathless from apparently having run a distance. “This is not whom we are, and you know it!”

“We cannot take any more chances!” cried Encender, pointing at Gully. “This one... he’s probably one of them, scouting to find our encampment. And where there’s one, there’s more. We’ll
all
be slaves if he lives! We can no longer afford to trust fate to protect us, Exoutur. We’ve reached a point of choosing between our principles and our survival. I choose survival!”

Gully wanted to interject, but found himself too thoroughly confused by the situation to say anything. No one seemed to mind the huge bear standing there. He could only explain it as perhaps that it was a tamed bear. But the one named Encender referred to both the bear and the larger man with the same name of Raybb, which also made no sense.

“You best not let our father hear those words, ’Cender!”

“We must make our
own
decisions at some point, brother! We must lead from our
own
judgment! Our father will not always be here to lead the clan! You probably already told him about the spy, didn’t you? Always running to him rather than making a decision for yourself!” snapped ’Cender.

The larger man finally broke his silence, his thick, black beard barely parting as he spoke, “No, Encender, neither of us have involved the patriarch. But, sir, I would be very surprised if Abella has not already spotted us.”

Encender wielded the knife again and stepped towards Gully. “Then I have no time to fix this problem properly before the patriarch’s soft heart dooms us all!” He looked Gully in the eye and said, “I’m sorry for this, but at least I will swear to you that it will be quick and painless.”

The chilling sincerity in the statement caused Gully’s fear to rise in his throat and he found himself helpless and unable to plead for his own life.

Before he could gather his wits enough to scream or yell for this patriarch person, who might be the only one to save him, the sound of thundering feet reached his ears. He did cry out when, completely out of nowhere, a large wolf, half again larger than the biggest wolf Gully had ever seen, attacked the one named Encender, bowling the dark-haired man over as the wolf snapped and snarled. A second wolf, a split-second behind, bounded up and positioned itself in front of Gully.

Gully drew back and frantically tried to free his hands again, jerking and pulling at the cords that tied him as fiercely as he could. He did everything he could to open the gap in the knots enough so he could free even one hand, but the ropes were too tight and well-tied. He tried his best to push away from the attacking wolves, but neither of them seemed interested in him.

The first wolf, as soon as it had knocked Encender down, stood back and growled savagely at him, fangs flashing white. The second wolf stayed in front of Gully, head lowered and teeth bared in Encender’s direction. To Gully’s surprise, neither of the other two men, or the bear, seemed alarmed at what was happening in front of them. They merely backed up a step or two to let the attack continue without running away or interfering.

Encender stood back up, looked around and retrieved his knife from the leaves where it landed, all while mostly ignoring the wolves. He brushed the leaves and pine needles off as he looked at Gully, helpless against the tree again, and huffed in frustration. He put the knife away in his belt and then scowled at the two wolves now between him and Gully.

“Oh, so this is how it is to be? Now that your worthless and shamed hides aren’t Mercher fighters anymore, you finally decide to turn brave and attack your own leader? Shouldn’t you have shown your cunning and valor on your own behalf a few weeks ago? Too late is too late, Gallun and Gellen!”

Gully wondered if the one named Encender had gone insane, or if it was he himself that had gone mad instead, with people carrying on conversations with bears and wolves.

He instantly decided that it was he, without a doubt, who was the one who was hopelessly insane. The two wolves stood still, but their images shuttered slightly, as when heat in the distance can make objects appear to ripple slightly, and then there were two men standing where the wolves had been, one appearing a few seconds after the other. The wolves were no longer anywhere around; it was as if they had disappeared. Gully shook his head. He wondered if he had merely dreamt the attack of the wolves.

And more, he realized it wasn’t just any two men who had appeared in front of him. It was the same two men, as naked as he had last seen them, whom he had rescued from the kidnappers not even a week earlier.

Gully decided it had to be a deceit of the dying light. The long, shifting shadows of the forest at dusk were playing tricks on his eyes. Perhaps he had hit his head roughly when he passed out, and now his mind was struggling between reality and nonsense.

Nonetheless, he found his voice and cried out, “You!” The two naked men turned briefly, one with an angry look of defiance and determination, the other with a slight smile, and faced back at Gully. “It’s the two of you! You’re the two that I freed from the kidnappers!” he cried in disbelief.

There was no mistaking that it was the same men, although they looked much better than they did after having been freed from their collars. They looked stronger, and the dried blood that had covered their faces and chests had been cleaned. They no longer had the empty, haunted look in their dark eyes.

Encender pulled his knife again and said loudly, “This is all havers and balderdash! Step aside, Gellen! This is
done
, before he brings every band of robbers and murderers in all of this forsaken land down upon us!” Encender tried to step around the naked Gellen to reach Gully, but Gellen pulled back his heavily muscled arm and struck Encender in the jaw roughly, knocking the man to the ground and sending the dagger flying into the leaves yet again.

“You dare strike me?!” shouted Encender while attempting to keep his voice lower. He began to stand and added, “I’ll have you expelled from—”

He was interrupted by Exoutur, who had stepped closer to the naked men and now asked the second one directly, “Is it true, Gallun? Is this the same person who managed to help free both of you?”

Both Gallun and Gellen nodded. Gallun, who still had a smile upon his face, squatted down and even put his hand on Gully’s shoulder.

“It changes nothing...” said Encender as he rubbed his chin where he had been hit, but his voice had already trailed off.

Gully, despite feeling like he was having some sort of delirious vision, and even with some of these men taking his side, continued to struggle furtively with his hands and feet and wishing desperately that his throwing knife had remained unnoticed in his boot.

Exoutur and Encender silently parted, and even Gully stopped pulling and wrestling with the knots at what he saw next. Between the two men stepped a large cat. Gully gaped at it; he knew it to be what was called an ocelot, rarely seen in the woods. And yet, after the bear and two wolves, it no longer surprised him to see the two men lower their heads at it deferentially as it stepped forward between them.

Encender began to say something, but the cat hissed at him and approached to within a few feet of Gully and the tree to which he was bound. Gully stayed still for fear of driving the cat to attack him while he was so helpless.

“Father,” said Exoutur to the cat directly, “Gallun and Gellen claim that this is the man that saved their lives.”

The ocelot turned to face the two naked men, who nodded solemnly to confirm what Exoutur had said.

The ocelot’s tail swished back and forth in irritation and then it turned to stare at Encender.

“He is an Iisenor!” puled Encender. “There is a reason, father, is there not, that we do not show ourselves to them? He was within mere feet of our camp! If he escapes, we will be at the mercy of every cutthroat for miles! We will have to flee faster than we can readily do and still hope to stay ahead of whomever he sends after us!”

A voice, an aged but very patient voice, came from behind Gully, and he twisted to see from whom it came. The voice said, “You are correct, Encender. We must be careful.”

Encender looked at the others in triumph. “You see?” he howled, throwing his arms wide now that he had someone who agreed with him.

Gully craned his neck around and caught a glimpse of a very old man, small and thin and with snow white hair, approaching the rest of them slowly and with the aid of a wooden staff as tall as he was. The man moved slowly, but it felt less due to his age and physical capability than it did to a nature of slow and careful consideration. A small boy of probably only nine or ten years followed behind him, both timid of the threat and extremely eager to see the stranger that had been caught.

The old man said, “But, my son, that does not give us the right to indiscriminately kill every one who is not one of us, yet wanders into the woods. The fear and blame the Iisenors unjustly lay upon us would be rapidly justified if we followed that path.”

The old man added as he came even with the tree Gully was tied to, “It is a noble goal to be better than those that hunt us, Encender, no matter how tempting it is to treat the same.”

The old man faced Encender and had not even looked at Gully, but the ocelot was now sitting on its haunches and studying Gully with very interested eyes. Gully, with a chance to study the cat in return, could tell it was an older one as it had a graying on its muzzle. As strange as the entire situation was in which he found himself, Gully had to admire the remarkable bearing of the cat, whose fur was beautifully spotted.

The old man had a soft, weak voice, but it was the kind that you did not dare ignore. Even tied to a tree, Gully found himself trying to sit up a little straighter out of respect for the man, and it had nothing to do with the fact that he was hoping the man would prevent Encender from killing him.

Gully was able to pull his eyes away from those of the ocelot long enough to see the young boy hand dark gray skirtings, like those the one named Raybb was already wearing, to Gallun and Gellen. They took the clothing from the young boy and tied them around their waists so that they were clothed like the large man, only they left their chests bare.

The ocelot sniffed at the air near Gully to get a better read on him as the old man stepped closer and then leaned on his staff. He asked Gully directly, “Young man, is this true? Was it you that saved the two before you, Gallun and Gellen?”

Gully became acutely aware that there were many eyes upon him, both human and animal. His throat felt dry and he had to cough to open it and make it work. “Yes, goodsir,” he said haltingly. “I did.”

“May I ask
why
you would venture into the woods to save these men from very dangerous people?” asked the man patiently.

“Oh, uh... well...” Gully stammered and tried to decide how to best answer the question. He tried to decide quickly what parts to relate and what parts to leave out.

“I was travelling down the South Pass Road and smelled the smoke of a campfire. I was curious and approached, finding men dressed as robbers with these two men, uh... Gallun and Gellen,” he said, nodding at the two, “held as their prisoners. I could not, in good conscience, leave them to such a fate.”

The old man thought on Gully’s explanation for a moment, and everyone gathered remained silent as he did so, waiting for him. The man then said, “Part of your story does not ring true to me.”

Gully shifted nervously against the tree. For the first time, he noticed that the bear was on its hind legs and standing behind the one called Exoutur, with its paws on the man’s shoulders. A few more people had now wandered up from the camp somewhere behind Gully and were watching the scene with interest. They all stayed silent, though, and did not interrupt.