The Hermit of Lammas Wood

  “There’s too much at stake,” Marong said. “Somebody’s been hijacking ships, stealing the cargo, and reselling it. That can’t be allowed to stand.”

  Gertie laughed. “If you only knew.”

  “What?” He squinted at Gertie. “You’re Gertie Pinecrest?”

  “Yeah. Most days. And you’re Richard Marong. We got a lot to say to each other, but we gotta live first. If you can see your way clear to move your posterior? I’d really like to survive til mornin’.”

  Marong seemed to come to some decision. “Let’s go, then.”

  “’Bout time,” Gertie said and struck off down the trail into the forest.

  Arnold and Jimmy grabbed the ends of a crude litter and hefted Fred off the ground. They wasted no time following Gertie. Richard glanced at Tanyth and followed, leaving Tanyth to watch the back trail as she followed along behind.

  Chapter Forty:

  Bad News

  Gertie led the party steadily northward through the day. They made a cold camp for food at midday but otherwise kept walking. As the sun began turning the treetops red, she called a halt in a narrow valley between two ridges. An eroded bank on one side gave them a modicum of shelter. A ring of white stones around an ash pit marked the spot as recently visited. “We camp here tonight,” she said, slipping her pack from her shoulders and standing it next to the bank.

  Arnold and Jimmy lowered the litter to the ground and Fred eased himself off it so he could lean against the grassy bank.

  “How you doin’?” Gertie asked.

  “Hurtin’, and bein’ carried all day made me dizzy, but that’s a small price to pay for livin’,” he said. “Thanks. All of you.” He looked from face to face and then down to his hands, clasped together in his lap.

  “We got any food left?” Tanyth asked.

  “I’m hopin’ you got travel rations for all of us for tonight,” Gertie said, a smile on her lips. “If not, we’re gonna go hungry til mornin’.”

  “Yeah. I got some, but we gotta either stop addin’ people or recruit a hunter,” Tanyth said. She plopped her pack down beside Gertie’s and rummaged out six travel rations, handing them around.

  “I’ll get some wood,” Arnold said and turned to walk up the ravine.

  “Don’t go far,” Gertie said. “We’ll need to keep a close watch tonight and make sure Malloy’s men don’t stumble on us.”

  “I’ll help him,” Jimmy said and struck off after Arnold.

  “So, can we talk now?” Marong asked, hunkering down beside the fire ring.

  “Yeah. We can talk now,” Gertie said.

  “What’s all this about Malloy? Who’s Malloy?” he asked.

  “Malloy’s the man you’re lookin’ for,” she responded. “He’s the one behind all this.”

  “All what?” Marong asked. “He’s the pirate hijackin’ the ships?”

  Fred laughed, a single, bitter bark in the deepening gloom. “Yeah. Ya might say that.”

  Arnold and Jimmy came back, each with an armload of wood, which they deposited beside the fire ring.

  Tanyth pulled a few twigs out of the grass beside her and started a small fire. She filled her tea kettle with water and shoved it next to the coals. Nobody spoke while she worked, the long day following the longer night catching up with all of them except Marong, who looked from face to face around the fire.

  “Mr. Marong, we lied to ya,” Tanyth said. “Those men weren’t s’posed to kill ya.”

  “What? Then why—?”

  “They were gonna make you a slave in Malloy’s gold mine,” Gertie said.

  “Never waste a good slave,” Fred said, his face shadowed by his hair. “That’s what they told us. Don’t kill anybody unless you can’t capture ’em.”

  Marong’s face went blank, his eyes unmoving as he stared into the middle distance at nothing at all. “I’ve got a lot of catching up to do,” he said. “Gertie? Care to start?”

  “What are ya really’ lookin’ for? Ain’t yer daughter. You knew where she was last year,” Gertie said.

  “The council sent me up here to find out where the hijacked goods were being landed. We knew somebody was stealing the cargoes—just didn’t know how they were bringing the goods ashore. Or where.”

  “Why up here? Lotsa places handier,” Gertie said.

  “The council heard rumors about ships being hijacked as long as five years ago. At the time it was only rumor, but more and more ships never arrived in port. Some of them carried insurance, some didn’t. Insurance payouts were pennies on the pound. We watched and waited, but for the longest time we only had rumors.”

  “What changed yer mind?” Tanyth asked.

  “Stephen Mapleton convinced the council that it was in their best interest to make sure the insurance cartel’s fingers were not in the pie.”

  “William’s brother?” Tanyth asked.

  “You know William Mapleton?” he asked and then shook his head. “Of course you do. You’re the healer. You wintered there last year, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah. That’s me.”

  “That’s how you know Rebecca,” he grinned at her, the firelight casting shadows across his weathered face.

  “Yeah.”

  “Anyway, the council took Stephen seriously and three winters ago started shipping goods all over. Small, relatively expensive items, but marked. We know where they left from, who took them, and where they were supposed to be going.” He shrugged. “Almost at once a ship carrying one of our cargoes was lost at sea. Never arrived in port. Over that summer we lost four shipments—some were insured, some weren’t.”

  “Not much to go on,” Gertie said.

  “No, but by fall one of the marked items showed up in Northport and a second one back in Kleesport itself.” He shrugged. “By spring we’d found a third one, and I was dispatched north to try to find the smuggling operation along the coast.”

  “Why didn’t you sail instead of trampin’ all over?” Tanyth asked.

  “The council’s cutters sailed up and down for weeks and never spotted a thing,” he said. “My masters on the council decided that boots on dirt might give better results. There’s still a cutter out there on patrol.”

  “You know who the captain is?” Gertie asked.

  Marong shook his head. “No idea. Somebody the council hired.”

  “Well, Mr. Marong, you’re in luck. These fine gentlemen worked for the smuggler, and now they just want to get away without bein’ killed.”

  Marong eyed them up and down. “What were your jobs?”

  Fred looked up from his hands and stared at Marong. “Guards. We kept the hunters and trappers out and the slaves in.”

  “Slaves,” Marong said. “What’s this about slaves?”

  “Malloy didn’t just steal the cargoes, Mr. Marong. He stole the whole ship—keel to top, crew included,” Fred said.

  “How do you know that?”

  “I was on the Esmerelda–deck hand when Malloy came alongside and the skipper turned the ship over.”

  “What happened to Captain Harris?” Marong asked, leaning forward over the fire.

  “Malloy tossed him over the side. He went down like a ten-ton anchor.” Fred paused and looked into the fire. “That’s when he asked for volunteers to join his guards.”

  Only the sound of the fire crackling filled the silence for several long moments.

  Marong looked to the other men. “Same story?”

  “More or less,” Jimmy said.

  “Yeah,” Arnold said.

  “Malloy,” Marong said. “That’s not the same Malloy who used to skipper the Sea Rover?”

  “That’s him,” Jimmy said.

  “Used to?” Fred asked.

  “I came up on the Rover a week ago. Malloy’s first mate made skipper over the winter. He’s captain now.”

  “Malloy’s had his hands full here most of the winter,” Jimmy said. “He went south just before the Call.”

  “How’s that possible?” Ma
rong asked.

  “Dunno, but he was in and outta the hole half a dozen times this winter.” Jimmy said. “Kept an ice boat in the cove, and he’d run out in that.”

  “He had an ice dock,” Arnold said. “Log booms.”

  All eyes turned to the big man huddled close to the fire.

  He shifted his weight and glanced around. “Some of the guards talked about it. They talked about a lot of things when I was around ’cause they said I couldn’t understand ’em.”

  Marong’s brow furrowed as he stared into the fire. “Nobody’d expect he’d come up here because everybody knows you can’t get in or out in the winter.”

  Tanyth pulled the kettle back from the fire and measured out a handful of tea. “We’ll have to take turns. We only got two cups.”

  The evening breeze stirred the treetops above them on the ridge. Change is coming.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Gertie said. “Change is comin’.”

  Tanyth snickered.

  “What’s that?” Marong asked.

  “Them fool trees. Always with ‘the change is comin’.’ Change is always comin’. If they’re gonna gossip, least they could do is tell me somethin’ interestin’.”

  “The trees,” Marong said.

  “Terrible gossips,” Tanyth said.

  “I see,” Marong said and glanced around at the other men.

  “So, anyway. Malloy has his slaves diggin’ gold out from under the cliff,” Tanyth said. “We just need to figger out how to get them out of there.”

  Marong blinked several times and stared at Tanyth. “He what?”

  “That’s what we been tryin’ to tell ya,” Gertie said. “All them sailors? Them that didn’t choose to be guards? They’re miners now.”

  Fred nodded. “She’s tellin’ true. I have no idea how long the operation’s been goin’ on, but it was well underway when I got here last fall.”

  “I been here just over two winters now,” Arnold said. “The boss said he was gonna take care of us and we had nothin’ to worry about, but I didn’t believe him. My time’s almost up and I don’t want him to take care of me. When these ladies ex-caped, I tricked ’em into lettin’ me come, too.”

  Jimmy snorted. “Smartest one of the bunch of us, ya ask me.”

  The starch drained out of Marong, and he slumped down by the fire. “Gold mine? What’s he do with the gold? The council would have heard if there was a lot of new gold around.”

  “He stamps it into coins. Takes the coins to town and spends ’em.”

  Marong frowned and shook his head. “Are you sure? Making gold coins is an exacting process. He’d need—”

  Gertie reached into her pocket and pulled out two metal rods. “A coin press?” she asked and handed them across the fire to Marong. “He’ll need a new set of dies, now.”

  Tanyth almost laughed at the expression on Marong’s face when he tilted the dies to look at the impressions. “We thought you were here lookin’ for the counterfitters, Mr. Marong. Sorry for the confusion.”

  The wind sighed through the treetops again. Change is coming. Snow falls in the high country.

  Gertie glanced up with a disgusted look on her face. “I tell ya, Tanyth. It’s like that all the time.” She raised her voice and shouted at the trees. “Tell me somethin’ I don’t know, you vertical stack of firewood!”

  He has the girl.

  Tanyth looked up at the treetops, her heart making so much noise in her chest she wasn’t sure she heard correctly.

  He has the girl.

  Gertie sighed and closed her eyes.

  “What?” Marong said. “What’s wrong?”

  “The trees. They’re terrible gossips,” Tanyth said.

  Gertie nodded. “Sometimes they tell ya stuff you don’t wanna hear.”

  Marong scanned the faces around the fire. “Is this a joke or something? The trees are gossips? A back-country thing to tease the city folk?”

  Gertie shook her head. “Wish it were.”

  Arnold shrugged. “You better believe her, or you’ll suffer her rats.”

  “You mean wrath?” Marong asked.

  “No, he means rats,” Gertie said.

  Tanyth poured tea into her cup and slurped off a mouthful, letting the hot liquid roll down her throat. She handed the cup to Marong. “Drink up. We’ve gotta go back.”

  He took the cup from her and sipped. “Back? Back where?”

  “Back to the hole,” Gertie said. “How far away are we, Tanyth?”

  Tanyth closed her eyes and centered herself, seeking her owl.

  The last glow of the sun faded as she blinked and stretched. It had been a good sleep. The hunting was good here, away from the men. She ruffled her feathers and preened a bit, giving her primaries a good oiling. The night called her, and she dropped from the branch to soar between the trees.

  She lifted above the canopy, circling once to get her bearings. The pointed bay lay to the southwest, and she soared north, looking for a fire in the trees. Shadows moved in the forest and she dropped down to see men moving, some rapidly with much noise. Some very quiet.

  A twist of her tail and she soared above the treetops once more. It took her several long minutes of gliding through the chill night air before she found the glow of a fire half hidden in a ravine. She turned and sailed back toward the pointed bay and the fields where hunting would be sparse this night.

  The moon, just past full, peeked above the eastern horizon as the sun’s final glow gave way to darkness and stars.

  Tanyth opened her eyes and looked to Gertie.

  The old woman smiled. “Welcome back.”

  “Thanks. We’re about eight or ten miles from the bay, but the woods are crawling with green shirts.”

  “I don’t understand,” Marong said. “We know where this place is. All we need to do is get back to Northport and get help.”

  “Who you gonna ask for help?” Gertie asked. “The garrison works for Malloy.”

  “I’ll take the next boat back to Kleesport and get the council’s support. Malloy and his men haven’t bought that, or I wouldn’t be here.”

  “Ya. You can do that. Take these guys with ya,” Gertie said, waving a hand at the green shirted ex-guards. “We gotta go back. Right now.”

  “I don’t understand. Why?” Marong asked.

  “Because Malloy has Rebecca,” Tanyth said.

  Marong sat up like he’d been hit with a stick. “What? How can that be? She’s out at Mapleton’s little clay mine.”

  Tanyth shook her head. “She came north with me.”

  “She’s here?”

  “She was in Northport. When Malloy found out that Robert didn’t have the bomb, he prob’ly grabbed her as leverage to try to get me to talk,” Tanyth said. “He’s gonna be surprised to find I’m not waitin’ for him.”

  “He’s gonna be mad you burned his office,” Arnold said.

  Marong looked at the two metal rods in his hand, hefting them as if judging their weight. “That’s not the half of it,” he said. He shook his head and looked at Tanyth. “What bomb?”

  “Oh, we found a bomb on Zypheria’s Call on the voyage north. The insurance cartel wanted to make an example of Saul Groves by sinkin’ his ship on the way out. Malloy knows about it. When he found out that the Call wasn’t sunk, he lit out like a scared cat.”

  Marong opened his eyes wide and stretched his face. “Under any other circumstance I’d think I was dreaming.” He stared at Tanyth. “This is all true? All of it?”

  “Yeah. Wish it wasn’t.”

  Marong handed the dies back to Gertie. “You keep these for now.”

  Gertie shook her head and jerked a thumb at Arnold. “Give ’em to him. We’re goin’ back in the hole, and I ain’t takin’ them back in with me.”

  Marong looked at the big man and held out the dies. “Keep ’em safe.”

  “I will, sir,” Arnold said. He took the metal rods and slipped one into each of his front trouser pockets.

  Maro
ng stood and dusted off the seat of his pants. “For all I know, I’m going to wake up in my bed in the morning, but for now let’s play this nightmare out.”

  Gertie and Tanyth scrambled to their feet as well.

  Gertie turned to Jimmy. “You three stay here tonight. Get some sleep. At first light, follow the ravine north. It’ll take you almost to Black Rock Canyon. You should get there by sundown tomorrow if you move along. Even carryin’ Fred. If you can get to Black Rock, you’ll prob’ly be safe. Just don’t talk to any garrison troops while you’re wearin’ black and green.”

  Tanyth looked to Marong. “I hope you’re right about wakin’ up in your bed tomorrow morning, but I’ll settle for wakin’ up alive.”

  Marong’s lips tightened into a line above his beard. “You’re sure he’s got her?”

  Tanyth looked to the trees at the top of the ridge. “Terrible gossips, trees,” she said. “Most of the time they tell ya stuff you already know, and the rest of the time they tell ya stuff you don’t wanna hear.”

  Gertie nodded. “Sorry you had to learn that lesson, dearie.”

  Marong glanced at the trees above them. “Let’s go get my daughter back,” he said.

  Chapter Forty-one:

  Back Down

  Tanyth, Gertie, and Marong moved fast. They left their packs behind after they distributed the food to the remaining men. By midnight, they stood just inside the tree line, looking out at the cliff top.

  “I thought—” Marong began, but Gertie shushed him with a scowl and a wave of her hand.

  “I thought,” Marong whispered, with a glance at Gertie, “that the forest was full of guards. We haven’t seen one.”

  “You haven’t,” Gertie said.

  “Gertie uses the forest mice as scouts. We’ve been sneakin’ between ’em. We came past twelve or so in the last five miles.” Tanyth said. “There’s guards in holes along the top of the cliff.”

  “No there ain’t,” Gertie said, her eyes unfocused. “More’n half them posts got nobody in ’em.”

  “Huh. Wonder where they went?” Tanyth muttered low.

  “Given the number of men in the woods, I’d guess at least some o’ them took a lesson from Fred and Jimmy,” the old woman said.