CHAPTER EIGHTEEN - SKULKING

As Raedrick expected, the twenty horses had indeed cut up the ground fairly well. He found it hard to believe that Isenholf—he could not bring himself to call the criminal by his assumed name—neglected to think about that. So he halfway expected to find the rear guard lying in wait somewhere on the trail.

But when he and Selam reached the Eastflow ford without incident, Raedrick began to rethink his assumption. Maybe Isenholf hadnotthought about the trail he left. Or worse, maybe he simply did not care. He had not bothered to hide his contempt, even of his former comrades in arms. He had always been cocky, but not sloppy.

“He must be very sure that his advantage is unassailable,” Raedrick said to himself.

“Or he’s just an ass,” Selam offered.

Raedrick blinked in surprise. He had not realized he spoke loudly enough to be heard. He shook his head and chuckled softly before replying. “Always has been.”

Selam chuckled as well, and the two men exchanged grins.

They had opted against horses for the pursuit. For one thing, riders were easier to spot, and this night’s excursion required stealth. For another thing, Selam did not own one. And Raedrick did not feel right about loaning out Julian’s without asking. So instead they had taken a few minutes to retrieve warm cloaks from their rooms and wading boots from the fishing company’s warehouse, then set out after the brigands as twilight was beginning to settle over the Vale.

Even with the wading boots, crossing the ford was uncomfortably frigid. Raedrick shuddered in sympathy for the horses who had to cross it and made a mental note to get a few extra cubes of sugar for his mare. She had earned it crossing this three times in the last few days.

It was full dark when they emerged from the ford and discarded their wading boots behind an outbuilding at the burned farm. “It’s going to be tough following even this trail in the dark, you know,” Selam noted.

“I know. The moon should be up soon; that will help.” Raedrick glanced to the west toward where he expected the nearly full moon to rise and was gratified to see a faint glow on the horizon beyond the mountains. Any minute now.

Selam was right. Even after the moon rose above the mountains, it was slow going. It helped to have some notion as to where the trail would lead. And sure enough, at around the same place the prisoner had turned southeast the other day, this large group made the same turn. At least that was not just a ploy.

As before, the riders moved into the hills, climbing the first several and then descending into the small valleys between them. After doing that several times, Raedrick was beginning to become irritated; how did he and Julian lose that guy the other day if he had gone on like this?

The question answered itself a moment later. As they descended the back of yet another hill, the trail abruptly turned to the left, heading due east down the center of the valley between two hills. The valley continued a fair distance, slowly veering back to the south. About a quarter of a mile further on, as the curve of the valley brought the first hill out of sight, the hill to the left became rougher, more boulder-strewn. Then suddenly a cleft in the hillside came into view: a narrow chasm between adjoining hillsides that stretched east and slowly rose higher into the hills.

“I never heard of a formation like that in this part of the Vale,” Selam said, sounding and looking surprised.

“There hasn’t been a farmstead in a while. How often do people come out this way?”

The fishing man shrugged. “Not too often that I know of. But then, I don’t know all the ins and outs around here.”

Raedrick looked sidelong at him. “I didn’t think you grew up here.”

“What gave me away?”

“There don’t seem to be very many trained swordsmen in this town.” Raedrick chuckled and added, “And you drop your r’s. Folks from here don’t do that.”

Selam frowned as he looked away from Raedrick and back toward the chasm. “Even with that moon, it will be hard to see anything in there.”

Ignoring the change in topic, Raedrick glanced up at the moon, now almost directly overhead. “We won’t get any better light until morning. Might as well get moving.”

“I know. Just saying.”

Sure enough, it was extremely dark within the chasm. The passage was narrow; maybe two people could ride side by side, but it would be uncomfortable. Also, it looked as though the walls of the chasm actually narrowed toward the top. That all resulted in very little light making it down to the floor where Raedrick and Selam walked.

Fortunately, the floor of the chasm was smooth and devoid of loose rocks. No doubt the brigands had cleared it out to make for easier passage. All the same, both men stumbled on occasion and their progress was very slow.

At one point, Raedrick looked back and was surprised to see that they had ascended a hundred feet or more. Glancing upwards, it did not look as though the chasm walls were much lower than they had been before. That meant the hills the chasm cut through were large indeed. He racked his brain, trying to recall seeing any hills high enough to conceal a feature like this when he and Julian had been here in the daylight, and came up lacking. What was going on?

The chasm continued to rise for a several hundred yards, then abruptly came to an end. One moment, Raedrick and Selam were walking in near pitch blackness. The next, they stepped out into a large open area that appeared chiseled out of rock. Or at least, Raedrick surmised it was open. He couldn’t see very far ahead, but there were no distinguishing features except behind them. Rather than rolling hills, sheer cliffs, a couple hundred feet tall, rose on either side of the chasm and stretched out in either direction as far as Raedrick could see in the gloom.

Raedrick blinked. It was only marginally less dark here than it had been in the chasm. Confused, he looked up to find the moon. And saw only darkness, along with what looked like a smoky mist not far above the top of the cliffs. There was not even a hint that the moon was in the sky.

“Where is the light coming from?”

“I was just wondering that,” Raedrick replied. Selam was quick on the uptake. He liked that. “I’m not sure what’s going on here, Selam. Do you want to go back?”

The fishing man looked at Raedrick with offended eyes and shook his head. “Haven’t found what we came for yet.”

Raedrick grinned.

They moved forward, away from the chasm. The riders’ trail was no longer visible, but there was no doubt which way they had gone. After a short while, Raedrick looked over his shoulder and felt a surge of dread. The cliffs were no longer visible. It was as if reality ended in a dark haze an indeterminate distance behind them.

“Stop, Selam.”

The fishing man looked at Raedrick in confusion. Then he looked back also and his eyes widened. For the first time, Raedrick saw fear in the man’s eyes. He was not sure his own did not show the same thing.

They hurried back the way they came. After a moment, the cliffs, and the chasm opening, suddenly emerged from the gloom. Raedrick was surprised at how relieved he felt when that happened. He found himself letting out a breath he had not realized he had been holding.

“Well at least we can get back.”

Selam snorted. “We can also get turned around completely without realizing it and lose our way.”

Raedrick pursed his lips. He hadn’t thought of that. “Isenholf’s bunch must have a way to safely get back and forth. Maybe we missed something.”

They went back to the chasm opening and spent several minutes looking carefully around. The cliff walls, the ground, the swirling mist above, nothing escaped their attention. Therehadto be a way for them to know how to get back.

It was Selam who found it, by chance. He stepped back from the cliff face to look at the walls at a different angle. After a moment, he shook his head and threw up his hands. Raedrick bit back a curse and turned away. Maybe there was something inside the chasm itself…

“Raedrick!”

He spun around, his hand going to the grip of his saber. But Selam was alone, squatting down not far from where he had been looking up at the cliffs. He vigorously waved for Raedrick to come over. Once he reached Selam’s side, Raedrick’s spirits lifted.

Seen from the angle Selam took while squatting, there was a fine silver inlay in the rock floor. It outlined a path about as wide as four men walking abreast which stretched from the chasm exit, straight ahead for twenty yards. There it turned abruptly to the right and stretched away out of sight into the gloom.

“We weren’t going the right way at all,” Selam said, a slight quaver in his voice.

“It’s a good thing we turned back when we did. Good job.”

Raedrick stood and found he could still see the path’s outline. It was almost as if, having found it once, he was now allowed to see it completely. Allowed by whom was not clear, especially since there was no one else around. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that it was designed thus, for some reason.

“Do we go on?” Selam sounded a bit less certain, less confident, than he had before when Raedrick asked that question.

Raedrick nodded. “Haven’t found what we came for yet.”

Selam chuckled.

Glimmer Vale is the first book of the Glimmer Vale Chronicles, an ongoing heroic fantasy series set in a world of valor and magic. It will be published here, one chapter per week, on Tuesday.

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