It pleased him to know that his father and Othello’s family had some connection. In fact, the invention of the gun was what had begun the dwarven bid for equality. Perhaps if his father had not issued the challenge, the world would be a different place.
“Ah, that’s where Forsyth’s lads are hiding. There’s a campfire,” Rotherham shouted. “Tents too.”
Fletcher turned, scanning the empty canyon behind him as if he had somehow missed them as they had walked in. But no, Rotherham’s hand was pointing through the canyon exit, into the knee-high grass beyond. As Fletcher looked more closely, he could make out the shapes of tents in the grasses.
“Those idiots,” Sir Caulder snarled, stomping through the Cleft and into the grasses. “They’re camping on the wrong damned side.”
Fletcher followed. He winced, the glare of the sun hitting him as he stepped out of the canyon’s shadow. To the left and right, the mountain curved outward and away, leaving a few hundred feet of tangled grasses and low bushes before a wall of jungle began. A few stunted trees dotted the area, but otherwise it was devoid of life.
“Anyone here?” Fletcher called, beginning to feel uneasy. There were dozens of tents littering the ground, but if there were occupants, they did not make their presence felt. Many of the sorry structures had collapsed in on themselves, and various barrels and crates lay abandoned beside them.
A hollow breeze rushed past, funneled through the canyon behind.
“Lazy fools have abandoned their posts,” Sir Caulder concluded, kicking at a ring of stones on the ground with his peg leg, tumbling a rock into a pile of half-burned bamboo in its center. “Probably snuck back to Corcillum as soon as we arrived in Raleightown. We’ve been undefended all this time!”
But Fletcher was not so sure. He crouched down and buried his finger in the ashes in the fire pit.
“No,” he said, feeling the barest hint of warmth. “This fire burned itself out only an hour or so ago, plus the ashes would have been blown away by now. Maybe Didric got a message to them last night, told them to make their way to Watford Bridge this morning. We might have just missed them.”
“But that doesn’t explain why they left everything here,” Sir Caulder said, scratching at his grizzled beard.
The Foxes were pouring through the Cleft now, peering curiously at the remains of the Forsyth camp. Soon the soldiers were wandering aimlessly through the abandoned tents, prodding them with their swords and lifting the lids from the barrels.
It was only then that Fletcher noticed him. A topless man, standing in front of a tree, halfway between the Cleft and the jungle. It was hard to tell—he could just see him through a shimmering heat haze. No … not standing. Tied to it.
“Foxes, skirmish formation!” Fletcher shouted. Instantly, the soldiers snapped into action, sprinting into a loose line, spread across the grassy basin.
Fletcher’s heart pounded in his chest. The man could be anyone. A deserter perhaps, left by the Forsyth Furies to die. But Fletcher’s gut told him different.
“Forward, slowly now,” Fletcher commanded, striding toward the man.
He walked twenty paces ahead of his soldiers, eyes scanning the edge of the jungle. The fronds of the vegetation wavered in the breeze, presenting Fletcher with an ever-shifting wall of green.
At first, he had thought he’d seen rocks, strewn about just in front of the jungle’s edge. But then he saw the red stains on the grass around them, the muskets and swords, scattered like discarded branches.
Dead men, in black Forsyth uniform. Eyes, wide and staring, mouths half-open in petrified terror. There was so much blood, more than Fletcher had ever thought possible.
“Halt!” Fletcher shouted.
The men could see the bodies too now, their exclamations of horror loud in his ears. Fletcher’s eyes flicked to the naked man. He was … moving.
Fletcher ran ahead, his eyes flicking between the tree and the corpses beyond, heart juddering in his chest. Now he saw the death apples rotting on the ground beneath the foliage. This was a manchineel tree, so poisonous that were one to shelter beneath it, the very raindrops that dribbled through its leaves would sear your skin like acid. And the poor man was strapped bare skinned to its bark.
A shock of dark brown hair obscured the man’s face. Though he was more a boy, truth be told, if his skinny frame and sunken chest were anything to go by.
Fletcher drew his khopesh and struck the vines that tied the boy to the trunk, wincing in horror at the sight of the blistered skin along the lad’s back, red and weeping with sores. This was orc handiwork.
Then the boy turned, and Fletcher jerked with recognition. It was Mason—the escaped slave who had guided Malik’s team during their mission. Even as Fletcher’s eyes widened with surprise, the boy whispered something, barely more than a croak forced through cracked lips.
Fletcher leaned down and lifted the boy into his arms, careful to avoid the raw skin on his back. The body seemed to weigh almost nothing; so little meat existed on his frame.
“What happened?” Fletcher asked, leaning forward.
It was little more than a whisper, but the word rang like a death knell in Fletcher’s ears.
“Run.”
CHAPTER
49
THEY ERUPTED FROM THE TREES in a crash of snapping branches. Cassowaries, too many to count, their black-feathered bodies tearing over the ground, red wattles dangling beneath blue necks and fierce orange eyes. Astride them were gray-skinned goblins, screaming their battle cries, spears and wood clubs held aloft.
“Close ranks,” Sir Caulder roared. “Schiltron formation!”
There was no time to get back to the men. Fletcher summoned Ignatius in a burst of white light and shoved Mason’s body across the Drake’s back. He threw himself on top of the boy as a javelin whistled past his head, so close Fletcher felt the flutter of air on his cheek. Another grazed Ignatius’s side, leaving a furrow of welling blood among exposed, pink flesh. There were dull thuds of more striking the tree trunk. Then, as hurled spears buried themselves in the shaded ground around them, Ignatius beat aloft, thrusting into the air with the two boys on his back, as more and more enemies burst from the jungle.
Fletcher circled out of javelin range, watching the figures below. Gunshots blasted, as desperate soldiers emptied their muskets into the front-runners. Already, cassowaries were tumbling into the grass, but still more came from the jungle border. Fifty or so were already on the battlefield, and as many more emerged from the foliage … then more again, over a hundred now, a seemingly endless flood of squawking riders.