Arm Of Galemar (Book 2) (55 page)

Sweat popped out on his forehead while his wants
wrestled with his training.  His need for information warred with his need for
satisfaction, making it hard to think clearly.  He left the taproom.

The evening air was cooler than the taproom.  The sun
was slowly vanishing behind the skyline.  It helped to settle his boiling
mind.  Colbey wandered in the semi-palace’s direction.  Two streets shy of the
estate walls he came to a city square.

In Kallied’s prosperous days, decorative flower
gardens had surrounded a small statue here.  The statues had been taken away
and the flowers died without regular care.  A different spectacle met the eye.

Several heavy stones anchored a lattice of iron
grating covering a pit.  Nailed to a wooden post nearby was a notice,
explaining the wretch’s fate to the public in Tullainian script.  Colbey
already knew the details.

Following the deaths of four military aides and the
severe illness of several others, soldiers had swept down on a certain merchant
like a winter storm.  Allegations of poisoning food meant for the plates of
Tullainia’s oppressors sealed his fate as well as his family’s.  After a day of
rough interrogation, they paraded the man to this square while decrying his
crimes.  He had been allowed a single day to dig his own prison.  Soldiers dropped
the lattice over the hole to serve as his cell bars before leaving him to his
slow death.

Colbey had followed it all with keen interest.  How
had the poison struck the command structure?  Had it found its way to this
army’s leaders?  Was the army’s core vulnerable to similar such attacks?

And also interesting was how the soldiers responded to
the act of poisoning.  He had followed the group that arrested the merchant’s
family, hoping to learn whatever he could.  How would the soldiers treat a
poisoner?  Would their anger or revulsion blind their sight in certain areas? 
Would they focus so exclusively on the poisoner who attacked them that their
attentions wandered from other defensive areas?

When they brought the weeping, beaten man out to dig
his grave, they declared he had admitted to being part of a resistance ring
organized by outside influences.  Meaning the frantic remains of the Tullainian
government, supposedly.  That amused Colbey, while he also disdained it.  How
typical of all the outlanders beyond the forest.  They had decided that they
knew the answer beforehand, so ‘interrogated’ their prisoner until he told them
what they wanted to hear.  Judging from the fresh scars Colbey had studied
while the man dug his hole, hoping to learn what techniques these invaders used
to torture a man, the interrogation lasted until the merchant screamed anything
he could to make them stop.

It was informative, though useless in any practical
application.  He had already known these invaders were brutal, savage killers
who would find justifications to suit any atrocity they cared to commit.  If
the Rovasii Guardians needed an answer out of a man, as happened once in a
great while, torture would never even be a last resort.  Also, his people were
aware that answers sought were not always the answers desired, and accounted
for that during the questioning.

Full dark still lay a half-mark off.  Colbey needed to
kill time before his night’s activities could commence.  He walked to the
iron-covered hole to look down on the man.  The merchant was curled in the
pit’s westernmost corner, staying out of the sunlight.  Perhaps he would die of
dehydration by tomorrow night.

At last you see what comes of your greed,
Colbey thought, malice tingeing his thoughts. 
Instead
of fighting for your land and your freedom, for the lives of those slain in the
invasion of your home, you sought only gold.  You did not work to push the
invaders back.  You chose to feed them with the fruits of your kingdom in
exchange for coins.  You ignored their sins to satisfy your lust for comforts. 
You are an enemy to all who seek justice with their blood watering the soil!

The rage boiled inside him anew.  He could nearly hear
the voices of his friends who were cruelly murdered in a place of safety.  A place
kept safe through the efforts of the Guardians.

A hand on his shoulder nearly made him strike with all
his deadly skill.  The foggy blurring around his vision vanished as he choked
down his instincts.

He heard a guttural bark while he turned to see three
soldiers in their alien armor.  They had descended on him without notice, it
shocked him to realize.  His rage had caught him up, stealing his awareness of
the world around him.

They were also clearly aggressive.  “I do not
understand,” he told them in Tullainian.  “I’m sorry?”

“They want to know why you watch him so,” a female
voice explained.  A woman, different from the one who had spoken with him days
ago, stepped forward.  She was dressed in an identical manner.

“I was curious,” Colbey told her.  “I saw the posted
notice.”

Words in Traders were exchanged.  Colbey’s halting
command of the language supplied him an extra moment to craft his replies. 
“They say you watch him with suspicious curiosity,” she translated.  “They want
to know if you have ever met this man before.”  She added without changing
expression, “We have been watching this square all day.  I think they are
waiting for an attempt by his other spy friends to help him.”

“Tell them I have never met this man before.”  It was
the truth, after all.  “I only marveled at the foolishness of a man who would
rebel against our new lords.”  He bowed in Tullainian fashion.

This would not be enough to satisfy them,
unfortunately.  One reached a hand to grasp his shirt and hurled unintelligible
syllables into his face.  The speaker passed mangled words to the woman.  Her
tone wavered, nervous this time as she spoke.  “They are going to take you in
to ask you questions.  He says they have been ordered to watch for any other
spies trying to contact this man.”

Colbey spent a split instant in consideration.  If
they took him in, then he would be past the security and finally inside! 
Except there was no guarantee the place they took him to would be the estate
complex, and they would most assuredly divest him of his sword.  The pommel
rested under its cloth against his neck, concealed as long as his movements
were taken with care.  Killing them all meant he could leave, but the uproar
would interfere his activities.

He decided against it, yet he needed a sacrificial
lamb to take their attention away from him. 
Perhaps the gods were favoring
me.

With a careful trace of fear, he said, “I am no spy,
nor friend to any.  Not knowingly!”

The soldier grasping his shirt clamped a hand down
hard on his shoulder.  Colbey was careful not to let it twist his pack around
to where his sword would be uncovered.

“They want to question you,” she told him with
resignation.  “I am afraid there is nothing to be done.”

“No!  Listen, tell them this!  Tell them that if there
are any spies about this night, then they are lurking in a taproom a few
streets over!  A man I saw is surely no more a true Tullainian than you or I!”

She translated, the words catching their interest.

“Truly, I can show you to him.  Peace to our new
lords,” he told them, his voice full of obsequiousness.  Colbey felt the vile
slime squelching through his fingers, his hair, his chest...his soul.  He bowed
low again.

The soldiers barked at each other before reaching a
consensus.  Colbey’s new friend kept his hand clamped on his shoulder while
marching behind.  With their catch thus secured, they allowed Colbey to guide
them back to the taproom he had left minutes earlier.

“There, in the far corner,” he whispered while they
peered through the street window.

Colbey waited on the street with his guard while the
woman and the other two entered.  The instant the Galemaran realized they
headed deliberately for him, he tried to bolt.  They captured him after
breaking several chairs, then examined his hand without bothering to question
him.  Since the man was shouting, he probably would not have answered in any
case.

Back on the street, the soldier who spoke directly
with the woman paused a moment to examine Colbey’s own tattoo.  Colbey was
unable to follow the mutilated Traders this time.  The soldier abandoned them
both to help with the struggling prisoner.

“He says you may go and to thank you for your
upstanding citizenship.”

Colbey bowed to the departing soldiers while the woman
followed after.  When they rounded a corner, his obsequiousness vanished.

Now his bumbling about won’t stir up a witch hunt.  It
is best left to me, anyway.  I won’t be discovered so easily, and I’ll learn
everything there is to learn.

Still,
Colbey admitted grudgingly,
he fought.  He brought what little skills he had
against these murderers.  For that, he has earned a merciful end.

He dashed at top speed to the nearest, easily scalable
building.  Kallied’s buildings were mostly long, continuous structures with
only thick walls separating one home or business from the next.  Several hops
across short gaps had him paralleling the street the soldiers walked down.  If
they continued in this direction, then they surely headed for the main military
headquarters in the city proper.  Colbey stayed with them until they passed the
turning that would have brought them toward a lesser post in a requisitioned
trading hall.

Yes, they were assuredly heading for the main
headquarters, stationed in the former Auctioneer’s Plaza.  Satisfied, Colbey
shrugged off his pack before leaping with all his Guardian’s speed across the
rooftops.  His nighttime studies had revealed the watch locations throughout
the city.  One lay only three blocks away.  At times soldiers manned that
lookout while at others they chose a different vantage to watch for trouble.

Luck continued to cloak Colbey this night.  Two men,
armed with bows, sat on the egg-shaped balcony patio jutting out from the third
floor of a building once belonging to a wealthy owner.  The patio afforded a
grand view of Kallied’s southern reaches, which made it an ideal watch post. 
Colbey dropped onto the patio from above with hardly a noise.

The pair would have been surprised if Colbey had not
killed the first as he landed, then slashed the other across the throat before
he could react.  A quick check inside the balcony doors revealed no one else
who needed to be dealt with.

Colbey collected a bow before arranging the bodies so
it appeared they had simultaneously killed one another.  The scenario would
likely be suspect, but given how foolish the outlanders persisted in being, he
would not be surprised if they actually believed it.  Enough doubt would exist
to keep a retaliation throughout the city to a minimum.

Across the rooftops the Euvea Guardian flew, leaping
gaps as a stag bounding over fallen trees.  He arrived across from the
headquarters before the land-bound soldiers who struggled with their catch. 
Several moments passed until they came into sight down the long, open street.

The scout was glad to see that the spy had calmed
down.  He knew he’d been caught and that there would be no escape.  It would
make the shot an easy one. 
Come and take your escape through me.

A simple shot for him, who had been trained to hunt in
the deep forest.  The soldiers were long in realizing that an arrow had pierced
their prize’s neck, so unexpected was it.  Only when blood exploded from the
spy’s gasping mouth did they slowly become alert.  Colbey dropped the bow with
its remaining arrows on the rooftop.

Let them find this.  Let them find one of their own
bows.  It will only confuse them and start a search among their own for
traitors.

He left, bounding across the rooftops.

*        *        *        *        *

Jide happily wiped the soot of Durrac from his boots. 
The place was a blackened smudge on the landscape.  It had stopped smoking by
the time he arrived almost an eightday ago, but the acrid smell persisted in
stinging his nostrils.

He had told Adrian there would be nothing to find, and
nothing was exactly what he’d gotten.  Jide, riding north, ran his fingers over
the eye patch, a gesture so ingrained it was deeper than habit.  His fingers
lightly rubbed across the worn-smooth leather while he allowed his thoughts
free rein.

No one remained in Durrac.  This was an absence that
also encompassed the Arronathian Armed Forces units that had been assigned to
the town.  They had pulled back to other stations after the destruction of the
‘rebellious’ citizens.  Jide had been forced to take command of a patrol unit
to bring him to the ruins.

Or so the unit believed, after they had broken from
their regular route for the day to escort him.  Jide had chosen them for their
history with Durrac and questioned them during the ride.  The end result was
gut certainties beyond confirmation.

Without doubt, some witless fool had attacked a Taur
controller.  Her body had been discovered in the night by off-duty soldiers
looking for a new tavern to patronize.  As Adrian said, this sort of
rebelliousness should be expected.  It was when they couldn’t see the dominated
straining against their bonds…then they needed to start worrying.