Barden pressed the field glasses tighter to her face, shifting this way and that, trying to spot faces and clothing on the bodies streaming out of the front door of the tavern. Nothing. No Marines, just a lot of chaos.
Not good.
The exodus from the tavern wrapped up after what seemed to her like a thousand people had rushed out into the market plaza, but still no Marines.
Sunlight glinted off the polished armor of a town guard exiting the tavern. And then another. Behind them, Diaz’s team filed out and fell in smartly behind the two guards.
Two more guards exited the tavern with drawn swords, and they all stepped off.
“Fuck,” she muttered, then let one hand drop from her field glasses to key the mic on her radio. “Cale, this is Overwatch.”
“Go, Overwatch.”
“I think Corporal Diaz and his team just got busted.”
“Fuck.”
“My sentiments exactly. They’re being marched southeast toward the center of town.”
“Alright. We’re through the hedge but we popped into someone’s back yard or something. We’re split up on either side of a wall right now, trying to get into the street.”
“Roger that.”
“No chance that was just an escort?”
“Diaz would have radioed if they had acquired an honor guard.”
“Yeah.” Cale’s voice sounded heavy, even through the radio channel.
A quite deliberate twig snapped behind Barden, and then a soft, almost melodious baritone in an accent that did not belong to anyone she knew said, “That is no honor guard, and your people are in quite a bit of danger.”
Barden twisted around from prone to her back in an instant. Her right hand went to her hip where she had an M17 handgun holstered. She drew it and flicked off the safety in one motion to draw a quick bead on the man standing just below the crest of the hill, maybe just a fucking meter or so from the soles of her boots.
“Who the fuck are you?”
“A friend, to you and your people.” The man raised his hands to show he was unarmed. He did wear a sword at his belt and she spotted at least two “hidden” knives peeping from under his travel-stained clothing.
Shane, by this point, had finally gotten swung around with her rifle, after getting tangled up in the sling trying to whip around like Barden had.
At least Shane was paying attention.
“Jones! Orley! Where the fuck is my rear security?” Barden looked down the hill, past the sudden stranger, for the rest of her team, fearing the worst, but kept her sidearm pointed firmly in his direction and her finger tensed on the trigger.
Two startled squawks from farther down the hill gave her an answer. The visitor had evidently snuck past them, which was some relief. She had worried for a second that they were dead, and she eased the pressure on the trigger ever so slightly. He probably didn’t mean harm to them, then.
Probably.
“Do not blame your soldiers—”
“Marines,” Barden said, and cursed the reflex.
“—but few there are in any realm or land who can mark me when I mean to go undetected.”
“Fantastic.” A creeper, and an arrogant one at that. “What do you know about what’s happened to our people down there?”
“Hilltown is not the friendly oasis you might hope for it to be in these days.”
“Our commanders visited a month ago and met with the town elders, said it was a potential safe haven at need.” She lowered her weapon a fraction, then glanced over at Shane. If he had wanted them dead, so the cliché went, they already would have been. As much as it annoyed her. But now that she could see him, well, she thought her chances against a sword were pretty good. “Scope our people.”
Shane nodded and rolled back over, taking her weapon off the interloper.
“Your leaders were not deceived,” the stranger said, and took a half-step closer, leaning forward with his forearm against his knee. The muzzle of her sidearm remained close to his face, but Barden didn’t move it, just yet. “But the good people of this town were suborned, perhaps by servants of the Dark Lord himself. They were turned against you, not from fickleness or greed, but fear of what evil those servants might bring.”
His accent wavered all over the place, and that was distracting enough. Piercing blue eyes and a smell like he’d been in the field for a year were also distracting, albeit for entirely different reasons.
She dug her heels in and scooted a little farther from him, trying to slide sideways a bit on the crest of the hill.
“Yeah, okay, that’s cool and all. But who the hell are you?”
With a laugh, he dropped down and folded himself into a neat little lotus position, his sword angled out behind him.
“I am a friend, of course. I am known to your forces along the Escarpment, and among many of your camps.” He smiled and threw his head back, shaking greasy, lank locks of hair. “You may call me Peridot, as others of your ilk do. I am a Ranger.”
He let that hang in the air for a moment, and Barden just greeted the silence with a shrug.
“That means nothing to you?” Peridot looked just slightly wounded.
“Nope.”
“So, my renown has not spread quite as far as I had feared, then,” he mused. “Perhaps this is for the best.”
Barden finally lowered her weapon, though she didn’t holster it or safe it yet. “What are you doing here?”
“Trying to help. I had heard the land tell tales of your flight from the disaster near the Silvene Forest, and hoped to aid you in your quest. You are traveling with the Lady Wíela. I would lend my sword to you, if your quest is to protect the True Silvene Heir.”
Barden jerked her head back toward the town. “Our quest? We need to know more about this danger our people are in, for starters. But I think Cale would love to talk to you about Wíela. She took off on us.”
“Cale?”
“He’s in charge—”
“Corporal, they got them to the town square,” Shane interrupted. “They’re putting the whole team in the stocks. But there’s a gibbet next to them that looks like it gets a lot of use.”
“Cale won’t be letting any of our Marines hang from a gibbet,” Barden said.
And neither would she, that was for damn sure.
Damn it, Peridot had disappeared from sight in the moment she’d just slightly turned back to Shane and the town. Barden grabbed her mic to update everyone about the situation in Hilltown.
And about their mysterious new guest Ranger.
“This sucks.” Rashad lifted his head for the tenth time and hit himself with the thick wood plank clamped down over his wrists and neck.
“Shut up, boot.” Brust, next to him, squirmed in the wooden bonds.
“Shut up, both of you.” Diaz stooped over next to Brust, with Heath on the other side of him.
“What are we going to do?” Heath’s voice edged high and a little twitchy, even as he struggled to keep it even. Heath seemed to be having a worse day than Rashad.
“Sit tight and chill,” Diaz said through gritted teeth. “Corporal Barden saw us, no doubt, and Staff Sergeant is going to be making some plans. He’s not going to leave us here all day.”
But after an hour, Rashad had his doubts. The sun beat down on them and the half-bent position they had been standing in to stay in the stocks killed his back. Of the four of them, only Brust could get close enough to kneeling without choking himself. But even then, it seemed little more comfortable than standing.
“This reminds me of Haiti,” Brust said. Rashad lifted his head and smacked the back of it on the thick plank yet again.
“Haiti?” Diaz looked over. “You were locked up like this in Haiti?”
“No, no,” Brust said.
Two of the town gendarmes guarded them, polished swords drawn and cuirasses burnished to a high shine. Occasionally they flashed the sun into Rashad’s eyes.
At least the sun was going down. Just another hour to go.
“If we came back to the ship drunk,” Brust said. “Or Shore Patrol had to drag us back, they’d throw us in these cages right there on the dock until we sobered up. Fucking Shore Patrol. Mocked us the whole time. Like they’d never been drunk in port.”
A man stepped over the bright white line three meters in front of the stocks. The general public were meant to stay outside that line. To keep from aiding the prisoners, Rashad figured. The guy was dressed well, fine materials in his clothes, a flash of gold or precious stones here or there, but nothing overboard.
“Excuse me, who is in charge?” the man asked the bent-over Marines.
“What?” Rashad looked up as best he could.
“I would speak to your leader?”
Diaz raised his hand as best he could. “Yeah, that’s me.”
“Ah, right, excellent.” The man adjusted his collar and regarded them all. “You look like strong and capable people.”
They all looked sideways, then back to the man in front of them.
“I can pay your disturbance fine and have you released. If you would do me a favor.”
“What . . . kind of favor?” Brust asked.
“Ah, well, as I was traveling from my home in Deorana, I was waylaid by terrible thieves who stole something very precious to me: a portrait of my mother that I was bringing to my brother in his ducal seat in Parazia. They took it and taunted me, you see? They said it would look good over the fireplace in their filthy hideout. Can you imagine? If you could help me get it back, I would be most grateful. I could give you each some gold as well, when you return the painting to me. I’m also a trader, so I can offer you some sturdy leather pants, if you need.”
“Sorry, Chief,” Diaz said, politely. “We’re kind of busy here.”
“I dunno,” Brust said. “Sounds like a solid side quest to me. We should accept it. Gain some loot. Upgrade our weapons.”
“We stay on the mission.” Diaz looked at the nobleman. “Thanks, but no thanks. Maybe later, when we’re done, but I think we’re supposed to stay put, or our Staff Sergeant would have said something.”
The man moved off and the four of them watched him go.
“We’re gonna be stuck here forever.”
“Shut up, Brust.”
“Yeah, shut up, Brust,” Cale said.
They all snapped their heads up and smacked them in one single coordinated clunk against the stocks’ planks.
“Staff Sergeant!” Diaz blurted out.
Cale stood in front of them. He had a long, brown cloak draped over his shoulders, almost reaching down to the ground, and a shapeless, goofy hat. The suppressor on his M27 just slightly poked out of the cloak’s folds.
Cale put a finger to his lips. “You Marines holding up okay? Just nod, leave the customs-and-courtesies bullshit in the rear.”
They all nodded, and Rashad managed to keep from hitting the back of his head against the stocks this time.
“Okay. Looks like they didn’t ratfuck your gear, which is good.” Cale glanced left and right at the two gendarmes. “And I’m working out how to get you out of this. I don’t want to smash-and-grab, but we will if it looks like it’s going to get bad for you.”
“This sucks,” Brust grumbled.
“Yeah, we heard you, Brust.” Cale said. “The Crucible sucked too, but you all made it through that, and that was sixty hours of misery. We’ve got some overwatch on you. We’ll pop anyone who looks like they’re going to try to fuck with you.”
They all nodded carefully again.
“Okay. Good work keeping the team together, Diaz, and all of you, good work staying not-dead. Now, I apologize for what comes next.” Cale reached under his cloak.
“Staff—”
Cale threw a chunk of rotten tomato at Brust. It exploded against the wooden stock between Rashad and Brust and sprayed them both with juicy pulp and seeds.
By the time Rashad spit and shook it off his face, Cale had slipped off into the small crowd that mingled in the square, moving among them with barely a ripple.
Cale flipped his cloak’s hood back up over the funky hat he’d stolen as he headed into the crowd, concealing the earpiece as he fit it back in.
“How’s Rashad?” Barden asked over the radio.
“He’ll live.”
“That’s encouraging.”
“They’re all fine,” Cale said. “It’s the worst combat-conditioning stint they’ve ever done, but it’s not going to kill them.”
“Probably.” Barden’s own sigh came through loud and clear.
“Lomicka and Ysbarra have overwatch. They’ll take out whoever they have to, if it comes to that.”
“I hope it doesn’t. That’s going to make everything a hundred times more complicated.”
“More like a thousand, or a million,” he said.
“Roger that.”
“Did you get the coins off Orley?” Cale asked.
“He made me give him a damn receipt.” Apparently Orley had been carrying around local currency this whole time. Barden requisitioned it so they could make a second go at trying to get supplies.
“Good luck, keep me apprised. Going back to squad channel.” He didn’t wait for a response, just tapped the channel button twice on his squad radio. He pressed the talk key again, “Antoine, Hassel, what’s the status on our new friend Peridot and his hunt?”
“He did what he promised on the tin. Tracked Lady Wíela due north of town, Staff Sergeant.” Antoine’s voice crackled in his ear. “About a klick north of our observation hill. We’ve got eyes on her.”
“Okay, I’m Oscar Mike. Be there in fifteen. Try to keep her from wandering off any farther.”
“We’ll do what we can.”
Cale made his way out the northeast gate, thankful again for the cloaks that this Peridot character had scrounged for them. In fact, they fit like they had been tailored to drape over his weapons and gear, so he had to wonder exactly where the stranger had gotten them. They certainly seemed to carry some kind of enchantment that made people look away. And Cale thought it suspicious that Peridot had brought enough for the entire squad, including the four in the stocks. But at the moment, he’d take any lifeline offered if it wasn’t too obviously a snake; the mission and the welfare of his squad took priority.
Once out of sight of the northeast gate, Cale broke into a trot and angled off the road to take his bearings on the hills that bordered the north side of the town and gave it its name. He let Antoine guide him in, and before long he dropped from a trot into a fast and agitated walk to fall in beside the still-fuming Lady Wíela.
“Lady Wíela!” Cale shouted after her as she climbed a grassy rise just outside of town on the northeast side. Trees dotted the landscape in the distance, thickening toward forest as the hills crept to the foot of Mount Grunt in the distance.
“Lady Wíela, stop!” He knew she could damn well hear him.
She waved back at them, clearly annoyed, and carried on.
Shit.
Cale couldn’t blame her. He’d be annoyed with himself at this point, too. But, she was his mission, one way or another.
“Lady, please stop, now!” He surged forward at his own shout and broke into a trot with Antoine and Hassel tight behind him. He gripped his M27, resisting the urge to click it off SAFE. It would be an easy shot, and in keeping with one of Captain Hobbs’s last orders to him, but he wasn’t quite ready—
An arrow smacked into the turf at Wíela’s feet, and she yelped. She turned fully around. “What do you think you’re doing?”
She wasn’t looking at Cale, but right at Peridot, a few meters off to Cale’s left, casually nocking another arrow.
“Hey, hey, hey,” Cale said, spreading his arms out and letting his rifle dangle from its sling. He moved between the Ranger and the forest elf. “No threats, just . . . let’s talk, okay?”
“I just wanted to get her attention,” Peridot said.
“Oh yes, now you want my attention, hmm?” Wíela yanked the arrow out of the ground and stalked back toward the Ranger. Something about her tone and posture said an old argument was about to be rekindled.
“Let’s calm down,” Cale said.
“Did you join with this . . . itinerant wanderer to track me down and help him plight his troth?” Wíela snapped.
Plight his troth?
What the fuck did that even mean?
Cale groped around for a response. He glanced back at Antoine, who was absolutely no fucking help.
Peridot slung his bow over his shoulder. “If I, trained by the elves of Morrimar, can track you so easily, how do you know your own kind will not find you just as easily, and kill you?”
“At least it’s a chance.” The sneer twisted Wíela’s beautiful, mottled face into something almost demonic. No wonder they had thought her an enemy the first time the glamour wore off. “If I’m with these bumbling fools, I will die twice as fast!”
“Have you even told them who you are and what you seek?” Peridot pointed at the Marines. “Surely they have a right to know what they are caught up in?”
As usual, someone trying to make contact in order to help with intelligence didn’t just want to help, they had an axe to grind or an agenda of their own. Same as in Iraq, Afghanistan, or just about everywhere: a painful lesson learned and relearned in every war. But the necessity of trusting someone when isolated and alone on foreign soil also never changed, and so the cycle went ever on. He just had to hope he had trusted the right person, and that he could gracefully undo the inevitable complications.
“So, what are you after?” Cale dropped his voice, exuding calm as best he could. Peridot’s threats might have gotten her attention, but they wouldn’t keep her around.
And he needed to keep her with the group.
“My birthright!” She turned away, dramatically twirling her cloak as she did so. She stared off toward Mount Grunt, arms crossed.
“And what is your birthright?” Cale glanced over at Peridot. But the Ranger just glared at Wíela like a disapproving parent urging a wayward child to confess their sins.
“With the death of Queen Thahuarlein in battle with the Corrupted One, the Fiend of the North, there were seventeen claimants to the Silvene Citadel’s throne. After the Great Treachery and the orc raids on your people through the portals, as well as our lands, there are now three claims. I have the strongest of them.”
“Ah, right,” Cale said.
“But that’s not all.” Lady Wíela’s voice dropped and became hollow. Sorrow creased her dappled features. She’d be hella hard to spot in a forest, Cale thought. “The Tree of Divine Power was uprooted from its sacred glade and hidden deep in the Citadel by a worm of hideous strength. Now, the upstart Chouro controls it, though he’s not in any line of succession. The elves follow him, for they have no other choice. He controls the Tree.”
Peridot moved beside Cale until an inch or two of space separated the Ranger’s chest and the Marine’s shoulder. Cale sighed and nudged him back with his elbow.
“It is vital that Lady Wíela has your aid, and the aid of your people,” he said. “She, at least, is a legitimate ruler of the wood elves. She will be forever grateful for your help. Once she touches the tree, all of them will have no choice but to obey her, even the traitor Chouro.”
“Just like that?” Cale raised a dubious eyebrow.
“Well, some may resist, but it would be difficult for them,” Peridot said.
“And the rightful ruler will smite them with the power of the Tree,” Wíela said, steel in her voice.
“And that’s what this has all been about?”
“The Silvene Citadel would be a powerful ally on this side of the rift,” Peridot explained.
Cale tried to get to the summary sentence in the report. “You want to enlist the full might of the US military to steal back a tree?”
“Strange powers of the Corrupted One were at work in the original theft.” Wíela’s voice wavered, at once hard and mistrusting, then afraid and despairing. “The Tree was uprooted like a sapling.”
“And with the Tree in Chouro’s possession,” Peridot continued, “the Lady finds few allies among her own people who she can trust. Chouro, though not the rightful ruler, when touching the Tree can read the thoughts and designs of all ordinary wood elves. Only Wíela and the other two claimants can withstand his probing and control.”
“And that was what you were flying off to do, ask for help getting a tree?” Cale asked.
Peridot looked offended. “A most powerful, Divine—”
“Alright, got it, but it’s still just a tree. You know where it is?”
Ranger and wood elf looked at each other. “Yes.”
“So, it’s a retrieval mission. We do this kind of thing as squad-level operations all the time.”
It would be better to have the whole company for something like this. Overwhelming firepower and all that. But as long as Wíela knew for sure where the tree was being kept, a squad that still had most of its ammo would be enough for that kind of op. Especially if it was primarily infiltration. They weren’t Force Recon by any means, but they were a solid-enough squad they could make it work.
But at what cost? Their technological superiority was not the force multiplier it would have been in a less magical, vaguely late Iron Age environment. They could still get overwhelmed or outmaneuvered, as the fall of FOB Hammerhand showed. He would be leading them farther away from any known portal, not to mention resupply or safety. No one at home would have the foggiest clue where to even look for them if the portal was retaken.
FOB Vimes still seemed like the safest bet, and they could drag Wíela with them, then return here to help her with some real force.
A way forward began to form for Cale.
“Our squad, or a whole division, once we can get that many through the portal at Vimes, can help. But I need you to help me.” Cale held up his finger as Wíela started to say something. “I need to see if I can raise the next-nearest base on the radio, by getting to the top of a hill. I need instructions on how to proceed, and if possible, reinforcements and resupply.”
He couldn’t really promise to run a mission just for her. But he could give enough to get them to help him get them all to safety and deliver his Marines to the people who could make the call.
And they probably would. Cale would write a hell of a convincing report, now that he knew all the angles. Maybe it would keep her from getting the intelligence guys to spirit her away if he told a base commander “time was of the essence” and that the Divine potted plant would be moved again if they didn’t act right away.
“I can help you,” Cale promised, even more firmly now. “If you help me first.”
Neither Peridot nor Lady Wíela looked completely sold. So, Cale did something that he knew would catch shit for, but hoped would nudge this over to him. It was a moment of inspiration, he thought.
He unslung his M27 and held it out in the air before them all, conscious of the other Marines’ eyes on him. He’d once seen something like this in a dumb movie with knights, and princesses with handkerchiefs.
Sometimes, you just had to suck it up and do what the mission called for. At the very least, this would keep her nearby.
Cale carefully lowered to his knees, incredibly aware of how silly it looked, and even more aware of how the story would be told and retold and embellished if they got out of this and back to a base.
“I promise you my steel, Lady. My weapon is yours,” Cale said formally.
Peridot and Wíela looked at each other for a long moment, then nodded. She gracefully tapped the M27’s barrel with a finger.
“The true heir to the Silvene Citadel accepts your help.”
Cale refused to look back behind him as he stood and re-slung his weapon.
“The nearest ridge is this way,” Peridot said.
“Okay,” Cale snarled. “Move out!”
He stared at every Marine who walked by, daring them to say anything.
No one met his gaze.