The Serpentwar Saga: The Complete 4-Book Collection

‘See that dog dung over there?’

Erik looked over, partly amused, and said, ‘What about it?’

‘I noticed that last night when I went out to talk to Gert, but look at it now.’

Erik knelt and saw the dried droppings. ‘These are days old.’ He started searching around and found a place where one of the horses had also relieved himself not too far away. ‘Three or four days, from the look of it,’ he said after causing the horse dung to fall apart with a touch of his boot toe.

‘We slept three or four days?’

‘From the look of it,’ Erik repeated.

‘Can we leave now?’

Erik smiled, but there was no humor in it. He picked up his blanket, folded it, and tucked it inside the bundle. Then he swung it over his shoulder, saying, ‘I think we’d best do so.’

Roo gathered together his new bundle, shoved the blanket inside in a haphazard fashion, and swung it over his back. Without another word, the two lads headed west.

Erik held up his hand. They had been traveling for three days, moving steadily westward through the woodland north of the King’s Highway. They avoided the occasional farm they encountered and lived off wild berries and the bread they had found in their bundles. Hard and chewy, it nevertheless provided surprising nourishment and kept them going. Erik’s shoulder was healing rapidly, far sooner than either young man thought possible.

They spoke little, fearing discovery, and fearing also to delve into the mystery of the charcoal burner’s hut. It had been the second day after leaving that they realized that both Gert and Miranda had known their names without either young man’s having mentioned them.

Toward sundown, a distant voice cried out, a wordless sound of pain. Erik and Roo exchanged glances and moved away from the narrow path they had followed.

Whispering, Roo said, ‘What’s that?’

‘Someone’s hurt,’ said Erik, his voice as low as his friend’s.

‘What should we do?’

‘Avoid trouble,’ answered Erik. ‘That may be miles away. Sound carries funny out here.’ Neither of them had been too far from their hometown as boys, so there was always some background sound of civilization, no matter how faintly heard: a voice calling across the vineyards, the sound of a wagon caravan moving down the distant King’s Highway, a woman singing while she washed clothing in a stream.

These woodlands were hardly wild, having been heavily forested over the years for lumber, but they were infrequently traveled and were therefore dangerous. Other lawbreakers besides Erik and Roo were likely to be hiding in the forest.

Erik and Roo moved along at a slow pace, reluctant to rush into danger. Near sunset they found a man lying on his back below a tree, a crossbow bolt in his chest. His eyes were rolled back into his head and his skin was cold.

Roo said, ‘It’s funny.’

‘What’s funny?’

He looked at Erik. ‘We killed Stefan, but I never got a good look at him. This is the first dead man I’ve had a chance to look at.’

‘Tyndal was the first for me,’ said Erik. ‘Who do you think this is?’

‘Was, you mean,’ said Roo. ‘Soldier of some sort.’ He indicated the sword held in loose fingers, and the small round shield still on the left arm. A simple conical helm with a bar-nasal lay a short distance away, having rolled off his head when the man fell.

Roo said, ‘There might be something useful here.’

‘Stripping the dead is not to my liking,’ answered Erik.

Roo knelt next to the man and investigated the contents of a small pouch. ‘He won’t mind, and we can certainly use that sword.’

In the pouch he found six copper coins and a ring of gold. ‘This will be worth a bit,’ he said.

‘Looks like a wedding band,’ observed Erik. The dead man was young, only a few years older than himself. ‘I wonder if it was intended for his sweetheart. Perhaps he was going to ask her to wed.’

Roo pocketed the ring. ‘We’ll never know. One thing for certain, he’s never going to get the chance to ask.’ Roo took the sword and handed it hilt first to Erik.

‘Why me?’

‘Because I have my knife and I’ve never used a sword in my life.’

‘Neither have I,’ protested Erik.

‘Well, if you need to, just swing it like your hammer and hope you hit someone. You’re strong enough, you should be able to do a lot of damage if you connect.’

Erik picked up the sword, then pulled the shield off the man’s arm and put it experimentally on his own. It felt alien, but he felt better for having it there.

Roo put the helm on his own head, and when Erik looked at him with a questioning expression, he said, ‘You’ve got the shield.’

Erik nodded, as if this made sense, and the two set off, leaving the nameless man to the scavengers of the forest. The idea of burial was ignored, as they had no shovel and were concerned that whoever killed the man might still be around.

A short time later they heard movement in the brush ahead. Erik signaled Roo for silence, then motioned that they should circle off to the right. Roo nodded and began walking with a tiptoed exaggeration that would have been comic if Erik hadn’t been as badly frightened as his friend.

They almost walked past the man, but he shifted his weight and they heard the brush he hid in rustle. Then a dull thud sounded as a crossbow bolt sped through the air and struck a tree nearby.

From a short distance away, a fearful voice shouted with false bravado, ‘I have enough bolts to fell an army, you bastard! You had better leave me alone, or I’ll do to you what I did to your friend.’

Then, from what seemed almost within touching distance, a voice shouted, ‘Leave your wagon and run, old man. I’ll not bother you, but I mean to have your cargo. You can’t stay awake forever, and if I set eyes on you again, I’ll cut your throat for what you did to Jamie.’

Erik could hardly act, he was so startled by the sound of the man’s voice so close. Roo looked at his friend, eyes wide in fright, and motioned that they should move away. Erik was about to nod agreement when a voice shouted, ‘Hey!’

Suddenly a man with a sword and shield stood up, less than six feet ahead of them. He saw Erik and Roo and leaped toward them, brandishing his sword as another bolt flew through the air, missing all three of them. Erik reacted. He blindly thrust with the sword, not intending to do more than push the fighter away. The man tried to parry, but he was expecting a feint, not a blind thrust, and Erik’s sword slipped along the man’s blade and the point took him in the stomach.

Both Erik and the man stared at each other with astonishment on their faces, then with what sounded like a faint ‘Damn’ the man collapsed at Erik’s feet.

Erik was rooted in shock, but Roo leaped away and for his trouble was almost impaled by another bolt. ‘Hey!’ he yelped.

‘Who is that?’ asked a voice from beyond the brush.

Erik hazarded a look through the brush beyond the man he had just killed and saw a wagon sitting in a small clearing. Two horses stood in traces beyond it, and behind it a crouching figure waited.

‘We’re not bandits!’ cried Roo. ‘We just killed the man you were shooting at.’

‘I’ll shoot you, too, if you come closer,’ cried the man behind the wagon.

‘We won’t come closer,’ shouted Erik, a note of desperation in his voice. ‘We just blundered into this mess and we don’t want any trouble.’

‘Who are you?’