29 Cylus 721
continued from here
Oram had heard many tales of horses finding their own way home without their masters. He hoped now that those tales were true, and that he would soon have another such tale to tell after today, because his current plan, if one could call it that, depended on this notion: that the robber’s horse would out of habit find its way home if left free to do so.
On Mule he loaded his bow and arrow, his spear, his lantern, his snowshoes, a bedroll, and some food, both for himself and for the animals. “Animals” plural because that poor nag the robber had ridden in on looked on the verge of falling over. That said, Oram knew he had to be careful not to be too nurturing or nice to it; too much feeding and attention and the horse might decide to start following *him* around, rather than leading the hunter back to wherever it had come from. Yet he felt he had to do something for it, if it was to stay on its feet at all, even without the burden of its erstwhile rider.
Oram took three apples out of Mule’s saddlebags, one for Mule, one for himself, and one for the horse. He left Mule munching his apple some distance off from the horse -another beast was potentially another distraction- and walked up to where it stood hitched. After patting it to calm it down, Oram unhitched the jaded thing from the post in front of Zogs’ tent -inside which he could see his brother and the merchant packing up the recovered goods to carry back to Dyrgen. Equine eyes regarded the traveler listlessly while he held up one of the apples in front of the horse’s nose and waved it around. After a couple trills the nostrils started to work as the horse sniffed the apple. Oram carefully took hold of its reins and coaxed the horse down to the road. It followed his lead easily, albeit slowly, without any zest. Once they were on the road, Oram pointed the horse back the way it would most likely have come from, then dropped the apple on the ground in front of it. With the horse sniffing at the apple in the snow, the hunter made his way back to Mule.
The horse was clearly hungry; it had snatched up the apple and gulped it down before Oram had reached Mule. It did not, however, move from its spot right away. Oram ate his own apple and waited. Once he had chewed it down to the core, he gave it to Mule, and then waited some more. Bits came and went, and the traveler began to wonder if his plan would work after all.
At last, the horse began to move. It ambled slowly, so slowly that Oram could have followed it on foot. It moved along the road, funneled by the tall banks of snow that had been cleared from it. Oram followed, keeping his distance, though not too much. One could only see so far in the perpetual Cylus dusk, even with eyes adjusted to it. He alternated between riding Mule and leading him, to make sure both he and the animal had the right balance of exercise and rest as they went. The horse shuffled on fairly steadily once it got started, and after a while Oram started to think that his plan might work.
The odd procession walked thus for what was probably a break, though in that time the horse lead them no more than two miles. When they had reached a spot where stood a patch of woods between two nearby farmsteads, the horse stopped. Oram stopped as well, and got off of Mule to wait to see what the nag would do next. It stood still for a bit or two, as if lost. Oram started once more to doubt his plan as he watched the animal move its head slowly from left to right, as if it had forgotten where it was. Then, suddenly, the horse disappeared from view.
Startled, Oram quickly got back on Mule, realizing as he did that the horse had turned off the road and walked through a break in the snow bank on one side. Carefully, Oram followed, losing sight of the horse for several suspenseful trills at a time until he came even with the opening in the bank. A small trail led from it, bending sharply about ten paces from the road. From here, Oram once more could not see the horse, but after leaving the road and following the trail for a bit, he once more caught sight of it, as the small, barely-perceptible path bent once more away from the road and towards the woods. Whoever had laid that trail had known how to make it hard to see, bending it so that one could not see any distance down it from the road. And the banks were shallow, so that they would not cast sharp shadows -although that didn’t matter much in the current season’s level twilight.
Once around the initial set of concealing bends, the path settled into a long straightaway heading towards the woods. Once more, the horse was in view, still trudging steadily forward. Oram by now knew he was headed in the right direction. The woods they were approaching probably contained cottages that would be used by hands hired by the flanking farms during the growing season. Such cottages would likely be empty in Cylus, which would make them good hideouts for squatters or fugitives.
As they approached the woods, Oram urged Mule to pick up the pace just slightly so as to close with the horse before they entered the darkness between the trees. It was nearly too dark to see without additional light, but Oram trusted his ability to see the horse’s movement between the trees in order to continue following it. The going was now slow indeed. The second break of the hunter’s pursuit was nearing its end by the time he caught sight of a pale worm of smoke rising between the trees somewhere ahead of him. He stopped trying to follow the horse. Instead, he dismounted and began to pick his way on foot, leading Mule, in the direction of the smoke.
When he got as close as he dared with Mule, he hitched him to a tree, then carefully cracked opened the lantern at his waist. He slung it low and pointed the opening at an angle, so that the wan pool of light it cast stayed mostly low to the ground, and was thus less likely to be seen by whoever was burning that fire ahead. A pale ribbon of path was just visible among the black trees, the path the horse had no doubt followed. Oram did not step into it, but walked along side it, sidling from tree to tree.
He was not quite within site of the cottage when he heard hoofbeats behind him. Several hoofbeats. It had not occurred to him that the other robber might be out, and just now returning. He could very easily have left a fire burning so that the cottage would be warm when he got back, even though that was not a wise idea. Cursing his carelessness, Oram shut the lantern’s hood and waited. The hoofbeats drew closer, and then, after a few trills, the forms of several riders appeared silhouetted between the trees. They went slowly, though not so slowly as they would have if they had wished to sneak.
”He’s out here somewhere,” said a voice from one of the forms. ”Troop Watsa has secured his mule. Looks like we caught up with him before he got back to his cabin.”
”If he’s the same person,” said a second voice. This one Oram thought sounded familiar somehow, though he could not place it. ”We may have an interloper on our hands.”
”An interloper?” the first shadow asked, sounding baffled.
Before the second voice could answer, a third of the shadows made a quick gesture Oram could not make out. ”There! Right there in the trees.”
”You!” shouted the first voice in Oram’s general direction. ”We see you there. Come out here and show yourself!”
Oram did not move. A few trills later, there was a twang and a whirring sound, followed by a sharp thud just a few feet from where Oram stood.
”I’m not going to ask again. Come out and surrender yourself! In the name of the Elements!”
Having little choice, Oram stepped forward. Light sources suddenly lit him up, dazzling him. They must have been lightstones, given how quickly they appeared from nowhere. ”That’s not him,” said the first voice from somewhere behind the lights. ”Who in the Beneath are you, man? Speak!”
Oram was still trying to figure out where he knew that first voice from. He cleared his own and said: ”I’m Oram Mednix, brother to Osric, apprentice to Dyrgen the smith-”
”I know who Oram Mednix is!” interrupted the first voice. ”And knowing that, I now know why you’re here. And knowing *that*, I know you’re a damned fool. You’re lucky we came when we did. What were planning to do? Kill him? Try to haul him all the way to Scalvoris by yourself?”
Oram had to admit, it all did sound pretty foolish when put like that. He also realized who the familiar voice was: Troop Yarel, who had been his and Darius Baer’s “Commander of the Relief” an arc before, when they had volunteered to help patrol during the Cylus Dusk festival. For some reason, realizing he was talking to somebody he knew (sort of) and respected (sort of) made the hunter feel defensive. ”I wanted to just find him first,” he tried to explain to the dazzling lights. ”and then I was going to-”
”Well, Oram, you’re not going to find him first. Not tonight. You’re done here. Go home. I have no volunteer cloaks for you this time. No posse comitatus. Troop Felix here will take you back to your mount. When he does, I suggest you use it.”
The Elements’ tone had switched from hostile to polite-but-firm; nonetheless, there was little point in Oram’s arguing with them, so he went with the silhouette called “Troop Felix” towards where another silhouette named “Troop Watsa” waited with Mule.
”Mount” ordered a female voice. Oram complied glumly. ”You have a lamp I see,” she continued. ”Light it.” Oram reached down and opened the lamp to reveal the yellow light from the stone within. Now that he could see the faces of Troop Watsa and Felix, he was very glad he had come quietly.
”You’ve got a lightstone too,” said Watsa, without smiling. She gave no sign of being particularly impressed by the fact that Oram had a lightstone. ”Good. Now I know that if I stop seeing your light, it isn’t because it ‘accidentally’ went out. Keep your lamp open, all the way open.” She and Felix rode out onto the path and waited for Oram to do the same. Watsa pointed back towards where they had all come from. ”Start riding. Now. Don’t stop. If you dawdle, I’ll see you, and you’ll regret it.”
Saying nothing, Oram started riding. For a while, he could feel the Troops’ eyes on his retreating back. He rode on a bit more. The traveler started to wonder if the elements could still see him, or even if they were still keeping watch. He rode on a bit more. He had come all the way out here to recover Dyrgen’s strongbox. The Elements had not; they were here for the other robber, whose name they probably knew though Oram did not. Would they recover and return the strongbox themselves? He rode on a bit more.
Then he stopped. He waited. If the Elements were really still watching him, they would come to investigate and warn him when they noticed he wasn’t still riding. Nothing happened. Carefully, he shut the lantern, cutting off the light from the stone, then waited while his eyes readjusted to the gloom. He waited almost a whole bit thus, slowly seeing more and more of the woods around him, and gradually realizing that the regret Watsa had promised him was not forthcoming, after all.
As quietly as he could manage, he got down off of Mule. He reopened the lantern so that he could see better, and found himself a decent hiding place just within sight of the path. He hitched up Mule once more and shut off the lantern. Here he would wait for the Element detachment to make their arrest and then move on. Once they had done so, he would resume his trek up to the cabin, to see whether the Troops had bothered to recover the stolen strongbox and felling ax themselves. He doubted it. He hoped not. And then he would be able to do what he had come for in the first place: not to settle any sort of score with the robber he didn’t even know the name or face of, but to recover a strongbox full of keepsakes that was apparently very dear to Dyrgen and his wife.
to be really concluded this time...
