Blood For Wages

11: Hunting

Captain Cameron Gray squatted low on the edge of the shallow rise and looked out over the swaying meadow grass. To the south of him, only a few leagues distant, the northern border of the Foldwood cut a dark green line across the landscape. From his slight elevation, Gray was afforded a view of the top of the forest. Could see it stretching away from him into the hazy horizon.

"You're on your way, aren't you, Fia," he muttered to himself. "You're on your way. I can feel it. You're strong. Clever. I saw the truth of that in your eyes when we last met."

Gray's own cold, blue eyes moved patiently downwards, to the break in the forest that marked where the single road that ran through it emerged. From where he sat on his heels, making sure his dark blue and grey uniform was most likely blended into the slope behind him, the exit to the wood looked like the entrance to some dark green tunnel.

No one knew why there was just one road, the Holtway, through the entire belt of the Foldwood. No one knew who had cut it. No one knew how it stayed so clear, without any attention from foresters from either Arifold or Frekifold. Witches and thaumaturgy were what most believed, but because the Holtway was so important for the economic health between Frekifold and the tribelands south of it, that shared belief was rarely discussed.

To admit that witches had once been useful would be to admit that they still might be, and that would mean allowing that, perhaps, the decades of persecution of thaumaturgists might have been misguided.

Still, no matter who had carved the road in ages long past, the fact remained that opening others had always proved too great an undertaking. It was the one and only road.

Gray smiled thinly to himself. The failure of the tribelands to tame this feature of the natural world would only go to make his job a hell of a lot easier. Had the Foldwood been less tangled or easier to navigate, he might have had to try and patrol the entire breadth of it in his mission to waylay Fia and whatever company she had managed to pull together with the money he'd left her. As it was, she would most likely be riding hard to evade Gunn's retribution-seeking gang, meaning she'd be taking the swiftest route through the forest.

That meant that Gray needed only to concentrate on this one spot.

Gray crabbed his way carefully backwards and slipped quickly over the ridge. On the other side of the low hill a company of Frekirie outriders sat around, tending their horses and waiting; twenty-five hardy men and women who excelled at hunting and fighting any enemies that strayed into Frekifold lands with plundering, stock-rustling or murder in mind.

"Captain Gray," a man said, striding straight up to Gray and saluting.

"What is it?" Gray asked, walking towards where his small tent had been erected.

"I sent Ancrum and young Haggan to sit and watch either side of the Holtway, half a mile into the woods, as you instructed, sir," the man said. "Haggan is nursing a gash from some panic grass that he rode through earlier. His leg's a mess, but it should heal. I thought scouting duty might be a better use of him."

"Excellent. They know not to engage, but to send up an arrow with a red ribbon attached, or a lit one if it's after dark, to signal when our quarry has passed them?"

"Yes, sir."

"Splendid," Gray said, running a finger around his immaculate silver goatee. "Then all we need to do now is wait in readiness. Make sure there's someone watching the forest at all times."

"We should make short work of these common outlaws, do you think, Captain Gray?" the man asked. His voice was full of the kind of brash soldier's swagger that Gray had heard leave the lips of many troopers in his time. Troopers that he'd then gone on to dig graves for.