Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
A gathering of thirty Kai congregated a league outside of Saggara where the main crossroad lay, one path leading to Gaur, one toward High Salure’s southern border, and the final two into the heart of Bast-Haradis. A day and part of a night had passed since Brishen discovered Ildiko and Tarawin missing—hours that had seemed to crawl or race by in turn as the alarm went out throughout the redoubt, and he marshaled a force of trackers and support teams to hunt down the bastards who’d taken those most precious to him.
Nearly sick with fear, he held onto his outward calm with an iron grip and issued instructions. “You all have your assigned paths. If you find any spoor related to the queen or the hercegesé or both together, send a runner to the team closest to you for help. Be cautious and do what you must in order to avoid putting either in danger if you locate them and their captors. If you find yourself engaged in combat, no mercy. Understood?”
They replied in unison with a chorus of “Aye, Herceges,” before sending their mounts in various directions, creating a net that, if the gods were kind, would catch their quarry in short order and deliver Ildiko and the queen regnant safely into Brishen’s arms.
He turned to his own companion, the grim-faced Dendarah. “Are you ready?”
She nodded, mouth set and hard. She still avoided his gaze even after he’d reassured her she hadn’t failed in her duty to protect Tarawin. Someone with a sound knowledge of poisons had planned carefully, received help from cohorts, and used cunning over brute force to get past not only the door sentries but the royal guard as well. Their actions spoke of patience, strategy, and learning the routines of his household. Dendarah hadn’t failed in her role; she’d been outsmarted. As had they all.
Made speechless by his request that she be his tracker, her mouth had opened and closed a few times as she struggled with a reply. He’d saved her the effort. “You were an elite ranger before you became a royal guard, and you saw the person who delivered the tea and have some memory of those who entered the nursery. If we come across them again, you’d recognize them. I wouldn’t.”
He’d scowled when she fell to her knees. “I would be honored, Herceges.” She rose just as quickly when he snapped at her to stand.
“Gather what you need and meet me in the bailey near the stables at twilight,” he told her.
In those desperate hours when Saggara erupted into battle mode, Mertok shone as Brishen’s sha, summoning every tracker in the redoubt and from the surrounding area. On Brishen’s orders he’d also sent for the queen regnant’s previous nursemaid and the royal guard who’d escaped Haradis during the galla’s attack on the city. Brishen himself spent the time questioning the still-groggy guards and the two nurses who could offer nothing more useful than what Dendarah had already told him.
He’d stood in the bailey, exhibiting a calm he didn’t feel as all of the sejm participants left Saggara for their estates, stunned by news of the abduction, some offering to stay to help. Brishen had declined. “You’re more useful to me on your estates,” he’d said. “If you notice anything unusual, send a messenger to Saggara immediately.” Somewhere in the sejm’s midst, a traitor watched. The last thing Brishen needed was to shelter a viper at his breast while trying to rescue his wife and daughter.
Mertok had stood beside him watching as the vicegerents and justiciars rode out the gates. “Give the command, and I’ll bring every one of them back in shackles until the hercegesé and the queen are returned.”
It was tempting, so very tempting. Brishen’s fury equaled his fear, and for the first time in his life, he’d considered the merits of his mother’s methods for extracting information. “Not yet. Whoever was responsible will expect it and has no doubt planned accordingly. But I want your best shadows assigned to each Kai who attended the sejm, and alert any shadow we’ve embedded in the various households to be even more vigilant.”
“Madam Senemset will cry foul the loudest if you move against her.”
Brishen snorted. He couldn’t care less about Vesetshen’s potential outrage. “If there’s a sliver of proof she’s behind this, I want her brought in, even if you have to drag her behind a horse. No one is to have access to my chamber or the nursery except for Kirgipa and Necos. I doubt anyone will question why we’ve isolated the queen since we’ve made it known the hercegesé has been taken. They’ll assume it’s a necessary precaution.” He wondered how many more lies he’d have to tell during his unofficial reign over Bast-Haradis.
The abduction of the regent’s consort was one thing: a matter of outrage, of ransom, of personal vendetta. The abduction of the queen was a matter of state with far-reaching consequences.
“Make sure the guards and the nursemaids are kept apart from others for now. They’ve sworn secrecy, but I don’t want anyone beyond those we’ve told to know that Tarawin is also missing.”
It was effectively imprisonment for Tarawin’s erstwhile protectors, but he had no choice. The Kai of Bast-Haradis might sympathize with him over his wife’s kidnapping, yet the country would continue as before, secure in the knowledge their young sovereign was safe and sound at Saggara. A slip of the tongue by the sentries or nursemaids would incite a chaos he might not be able to control.
Just before he left to join the trackers, he met with Necos and Kirgipa in the empty nursery. It seemed a hollow place now without the lively Tarawin keeping her nurses and adoptive mother busy. The stricken expression on Kirgipa’s face told him she felt as he did.
“Madam Hosanth,” he said, using the title he’d bestowed on her for her service to the crown. “Once again, you’ve been called upon to help the queen regnant as her nurse, though you’ll be minding a child who isn’t here.”
Kirgipa bowed low. “Whatever it takes, Herceges. If I had the skills of a tracker, I’d beg you to let me join the search party. However, you have whatever help I can give you and more. And I’ll pray to the gods you’ll bring the queen and the hercegesé safely home very soon.”
Necos, who’d refused the titles but not the estate Brishen had offered him as reward for getting Kirgipa and Tarawin out of Haradis alive, also bowed. “Your secret is safe with us, Herceges. Rest assured I’ll guard this room and Kirgi—Madam Hosanth with my life. None will know the queen isn’t here.”
Anxious to take to the roads, Brishen hadn’t hesitated, leaving Saggara in Mertok’s capable hands and the lie of Tarawin’s whereabouts in Kirgipa’s and Necos’s. With each tracker team assigned their route, the group split into pairs and trios, fanning out from the four roads. Brishen and Dendarah followed a drover path that forked from the main road and ran parallel to a woodland perimeter and the low foothills bordering the eastern horizon.
They traveled through the night, pausing at numerous intervals to dismount so Dendarah could look for any signs or spoor. While a fair tracker himself, Brishen acted as her cover, scanning the area, ready to nock an arrow while she concentrated on the muddy path and hunted for clues. At this part of the road, the space was more open, with the treeline only on one side. That wouldn’t last. He could see up ahead where it stretched deeper into the woods and the trees sprang up on either side. His role as guardian would become infinitely more difficult. A heavily forested landscape was the perfect place for an ambush by a few or a kill shot made by a single archer from the shadows. The risks weren’t unknown to any who participated in the hunt. They were why Brishen had asked for volunteers.
Dendarah rose from the crouch she’d taken, gesturing for him to follow her as she walked a short distance, head down, before stopping. When he caught up to her, she leaned in and spoke in a soft voice. “The track next to my feet is from the wheels of an empty wagon. Were it loaded, they would have sunk deeper into the mud.”
He resisted the urge to glance down. While his instincts didn’t hum with the sense of being observed, there might well be someone in the trees watching as they tracked. Being obvious about what they’d spotted would let any observer know they’d found something of interest. “Anything else?” Like her, Brishen kept his voice to a near-whisper.
She nodded. “Best to walk for now with the horses on our outer flanks. I can show you more.”
Putting the horses on either side of the road acted as both blinder and shield. Brishen didn’t much like the first as he stayed alongside Dendarah while she studied details of various tracks, but the second offered some protection. Ildiko had once said he reminded her of an owl with his yellow eyes. He suspected he looked much like one now with his head swiveling as he kept watch on the landscape behind and in front of them by turns.
Dendarah pointed to more tracks. “It’s a small wagon, meant to be pulled by a single horse as you can see here.” She gestured to the pattern of hoofprints embedded in the mud with smoother wheel tracks behind them. It was indeed one horse.
The wheel tracks stood out in a path pockmarked by the numerous trampling feet of sheep and cattle driven this way at any given time. A spark of hope lit inside him. “Why would someone try to drive a wagon over such difficult terrain? Loaded down, it might end up with a broken axle at the first rut it hit. Empty, and it will bounce in every direction.”
His companion nodded. “And the direction these tracks are headed in promise an even harder drive for no good reason. She glanced behind her. “That’s the way to the closest baling station, where the road is smoother and meant for wagon traffic.”
Brishen tried not to let burgeoning excitement send him on the wrong path. “Maybe the driver lives nearby or was deep in their cups and got lost.” It was a possibility, but his gut and Dendarah’s expression told him otherwise.
“It isn’t just the choice of paths, Herceges. The track on these wheels tells its own story. The framing gear is narrower and shorter than that of a hay wagon built by the Kai. This is of human design.” His eyebrows rose, and she gave a sheepish shrug. “I wasn’t born a royal guard. I grew up a farmer’s daughter. I baled plenty of hay and loaded many a wagon before I took up the sword. And I know the differences between a haywain built by one of us and a haywain built by one of them.”
Brishen’s heart began to race. “Then the question isn’t so much who would bring a haywain down a drover path but what is a human doing driving one through the heart of Kai territory?”
“Exactly.”
His thoughts raced with even more questions. “If the haywain was used to transport Ildiko and the queen, someone would have seen them, yes? Aren’t these just simple carts with decks built across the wheels so hay can be stacked?”
Thank the gods for farmers’ daughters turned soldiers and trackers. Dendarah was quick to answer. “For the most part, but some have sides, and tarpaulin can be stretched across the deck and attached to the sides to protect the load in bad weather.”
Fear and hope threatened to set fire to his heels. Were he a more impulsive, less reflective man, he’d be on his horse, racing toward a hint of a notion as to where Ildiko and Tarawin might be. But this mission required thorough observation and patience he was trying his best to hold onto despite his terror.
“While it may lead to nothing, I think this spoor is worth following.” Dendarah’s eyes gleamed like small suns in the waning night.
Before he could give his agreement, the faintest sound—a sigh on a whisper—teased his ears. It came from the beginning of the treeline to their right. He raised his bow, nocking the arrow in place even as Dendarah eased her sword from its scabbard.
“You might want to adjust your hoods better,” a familiar, much-beloved voice called out. “I spotted your eyes a league off. Why not just wear lanterns on your head?”
Dendarah didn’t move, though Brishen had no doubt her surprised expression mirrored his. He lowered the bow a fraction and peeked around the horse’s head, spotting another rider approach. Like them, the newcomer was cloaked, but the hood had been pulled far forward, hiding any eyeshine.
“And what is a gameza doing roaming about harassing decent Kai folk?” he called out, stepping around the horse made shield. Beside him, Dendarah swallowed a gasp at his insult.
The rider laughed, a deep, feminine chuckle with a surprising touch of sensuality to it. “Keeping watch over a useless prince of no value.”
This time the royal guard gasped loud enough to make both horses swing their heads toward her. Brishen grinned, awash with relief and a touch of joy. He strode toward the woman who had dismounted to meet him halfway.
A soft grunt sounded in his ear when he yanked Anhuset into his arms and squeezed hard. He grunted as well when she returned the embrace before shoving him away from her. This close and her eyes were no longer hidden from him, a pale yellow that hinted at her anger. This was no chance meeting. She’d learned something about the events at Saggara.
While he no longer thought a watcher kept an eye on them, he chose his louder words carefully. “You’re a fair distance from High Salure.”
Never one to let her guard down at any time, Anhuset followed his lead. She gave a careless shrug. “Out hunting.”
“So are we.”
Her half smile carried a wealth of meaning. “I figured such. I thought I might join you.”
“Is the margrave hunting as well?” To most ears, this was idle chitchat between friends. Between him and Anhuset, it was a field report.
She nodded. “He’s leading a patrol now. Raiders thieving cattle. Absolute pains in our arses.” She saluted Dendarah who returned the gesture. “So, where are we off to?”
He updated her while Dendarah continued her tracking. “Whoever took Ildiko also took Tarawin.”
Her soft “Lover of thorns, they abducted the queen as well?” encapsulated all the fear he felt, not only for his daughter’s safety, but for the kingdom’s stability.
“There are thirty of us working in teams. Of those, only the trackers know we’re hunting for two people instead of one. I assume you came across a team while looking for cattle thieves?”
Anhuset’s gaze flickered toward the treeline and then behind them, much as his had. “Aye. I think they would have been close-lipped were it someone other than me, but two of the three I talked to served under me before I left Saggara and sent me this way.” She scowled. “Don’t even think of refusing my help, Herceges.”
Fierce, dour Anhuset, whose devotion was unwavering but always served with a heaping of nettles. There wasn’t a day that passed since she married Serovek that Brishen didn’t miss her presence at Saggara. “I wouldn’t dare. We could use a second cover guard.”
“Have there been ransom demands?”
He wished there had. If it were greed that motivated the abductors, the easiest and safest way to resolve this would be to pay them what they wanted to get his wife and child back, then hunt them down later. But something told him greed played no role in this abduction, and that frightened him the most. “Not yet, but Mertok will send a scout to find me if one comes in. I think this is about something other than money.”
She gave a doubtful sniff. “Are you certain? Whoever has your wife and the queen could demand half the kingdom’s treasury, and you’d pay it without hesitating.”
He’d bankrupt three kingdoms to get them back if necessary. “True, but they’d have a hard time spending all that wealth in any meaningful way without drawing attention.”
The trek down the drover path was slow as they followed the tracks made by the haywain in the drying mud. To their left, the trees thickened into a black wall of towering limbs with tufts of underbrush carpeting the forest floor. The fields to the right gave way to more woodland until they were hemmed in on two sides. As Dendarah continued to track, Brishen took up lead guard while Anhuset covered the rear.
The tracks didn’t veer or change as the path led deeper into the woods. Brishen held up a fist to signal a stop, pointing to where the road made a slight bend. A haywain stood parked to one side, its concealing tarp thrown back, the horse to pull the contraption gone.
Weapons readied, the three crept forward, staying between their horses as they drew closer to the wagon. They halted at the sight of a figure slumped not far from the rear of the haywain. Brishen motioned for his companions to stay put while he tracked a semicircle around the person, arrow ready to fly if they so much as twitched. He nudged it with his boot and the body rolled over with a soft thud. Brishen pivot slowly to peer into the concealing underbrush before gesturing for Dendarah and Anhuset to join him.
Dendarah bent for a closer look. “The haywain’s driver I presume.” She pointed to the dead human’s head, not far from the body. He stared up at the dimming stars with sightless eyes. “Whoever beheaded him must have considered his usefulness ended.”
Anhuset gestured to the haywain with a jerk of her chin. “That rattletrap of a wagon is held together by a prayer and some rotten string.” She pointed to the dead man. “And by the look of him, he didn’t have two coins to rub together. Not likely a robbery.”
“Someone who needed help for a price but didn’t want a witness spilling knowledge about the task later.” Brishen tried not to let his fear race away with his reason and make assumptions. “Then again, maybe the horse was of value. If not to pawn, then maybe to eat.” While the second wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility, the feeling of the first rang truer.
Undeterred by the filthy state of the man’s clothes or his lack of a head, Dendarah patted him down from shoulders to ankles, pulling aside his tunic to check inside and did the same for his ragged trousers. Her search yielded a reward when she located a pocket sewn into the tunic.
Brishen growled low in his throat at the sight of the delicate flower carved from white moonstone hanging from royal guard’s claws by a length of broken chain. Fury threatened to swallow him whole as he took it from her with a shaking hand.
Anhuset reached out and lightly tapped the flower. “Is that Ildiko’s?”
“Yes.” Brishen hissed the word between his teeth. His instinct was right, confirmed in a way that made his heart jolt. The memory of Ildiko’s delighted expression when he gave her the necklace tortured him as did his imagining the human yanking it hard enough from her slender neck to break the chain. He slammed a foot into the corpse’s leg, wishing he was alive so he could be the one to kill him.
Dendarah completed her search, finding nothing else among the dead man’s clothes, and moved on to scrutinize the ground around him. She pointed to a strip of grass at the road’s edge where it had been flattened into the soft ground. “Someone else, smaller and lighter lay here.” She bent for a closer look. “They’re barefoot. At some point, they lay on their belly, then their side.” She crept forward a few footsteps and ran across another spoor. “They stood here.”
Anhuset added her own tracking to Dendarah’s, noting more tracks—this time hoofprints—crossing the road from the woodland to their right. “One rider joined by a second one in short order.” She traced the path from which they emerged, disappearing into the brush that stood knee-high under the whispering trees.
Brishen tucked the necklace behind the padding of his hauberk and left Dendarah for an inspection of the haywain. The rickety cart groaned in agony when he climbed onto the deck. The tarp that once covered it offered up no clues, but the deck did. Tiny spots of blood speckled the wood slats along with knotted threads of fine linen that had caught in raised splinters. Someone had lain here, possibly bound, shifting positions so that the deck’s dry wood caught skin and fabric, tearing both in places. His claws caught on a few strands of hair. Long and wavy, they appeared a dark gray under the moonlight, but he’d bet his remaining eye they would gleam red in the sunlight.
He shoved aside the grim images that rolled through his mind’s eye. He’d be no help to either Ildiko or Tarawin by tying himself into knots over what might be happening to them now, but his gut roiled as he gently wound the hair around one of his fingers. Whoever had taken Ildiko had passed her to their human accomplice somewhere beyond Saggara’s border. He’d tossed her into this wagon and taken the quiet drover road that led deeper into Kai territory instead of away from it. There were still no signs of Tarawin.
“Look who I found grazing nearby.” Anhuset emerged from the wood, leading a thin dun horse by a frayed halter. “Having a meal instead of being one.” She scowled at the dead man. “I bet that arse-wipe kept this horse half-starved and overworked. Good riddance.” She tipped her head back to the forest behind her. “It’s as I thought. One rider came through first, followed by a second. Both stopped here, probably just long enough to kill the driver and retrieve the hercegesé.”
Dendarah joined Anhuset for a moment before following the hoofprints where they disappeared into the woodland on the other side of the road. Her shadowy form melted into the landscape.
Anhuset watched her go. “Whoever has the queen and the hercegesé, they’re either careless or in a hurry or both. They didn’t have much time to put any decent distance between them and Saggara before you called a hunt. Even on a strong, fast horse, they wouldn’t get far, and they lost time by concealing her in the haywain.”
Brishen wished it were that straightforward. “Or they’ll hide and bide their time as we search. If they went through the woods, the underbrush would make their tracks more visible. With two riders, they can split up, taking Ildiko one way and Tarawin another.” That would make things so much harder.
“They’ll extract more ransom from you if they keep them together instead of making you choose.”
The thought of having to choose between his wife and his daughter made him physically sick. “I don’t think it’s ransom they want. If so, they would have left a message of some kind at Saggara where we’d see it and instructions for what to do next. We have nothing.”
Keeping company with a corpse while waiting for Dendarah to return wasn’t soothing Brishen’s anger or calming his fears. He paced, pausing at times to scrutinize the spoor they already found or search the haywain yet again. He almost shouted his relief when the tracker emerged from the wood, farther up the road from where he and Anhuset stood. She jogged toward them on silent feet.
“Two horses, both heading east. If I were familiar with the horses, I might be able to tell if one was carrying a second rider, but with just hoofprints to go by, it’s impossible.”
Brishen shrugged and turned to retrieve his mount. “It doesn’t matter. We have enough to assume whoever they are they have Ildiko and possibly Tarawin.” He gestured to the cart horse Anhuset had retrieved. “Send it back down the road. There’s open pasture it can graze on until someone discovers it.”
Dendarah grabbed her gelding’s reins and guided it around the dead man. “What about him?”
Brishen didn’t bother to turn around, his gaze hard on the wall of trees ahead and the path taken by Ildiko’s abductors. “Leave him for the scavengers.”
The white flower lay heavy against his chest, a reminder of happier hours.