CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE - OBSERVATION

Melanie met Raedrick and Julian after the morning’s archery instruction, and they all walked to Constable Malory’s office. Unlike the last few times Julian had been there, both Constable and Deputy were present. They sat in their respective desks looking over paperwork of some sort or other. For a town that was normally quiet, those two seemed to have a lot of paperwork.

Malory looked up as they walked in and nodded in greeting. “Gentlemen.” Then his eyes widened and he smiled with what appeared to be pleasure. That was different. “And Mistress Klemins! To what do I owe this pleasure?”

“Have you been able to find the answer to that question from yesterday?" Raedrick asked.

The Constable frowned and made a non-committal gesture. “I’d rather we talk about it in private.”

Melanie’s lips compressed into a frown. If what Julian had observed from her so far was any indication, she was about to let fly. Raedrick beat her to it, though.

“Melanie is working with us now. You can talk freely with her.”

Constable Malory blinked in surprise. “Oh? That is…surprising.”

“I don’t see why it should be, Mr. Malory,” Melanie said cooly.

“Well it’s just that…” Malory trailed off as Melanie’s stare became more and more icy and her frown became a scowl. Apparently not a total fool, he cleared his throat and gestured toward Fendig. “We haven’t learned much yet. Fendig’s been on it.”

Fendig coughed, looking uncomfortable as their gazes turned to him. “We have not received any reports of additional raids or robberies since Farzal met with the Mayor. Are you sure they had just attacked someone?”

Raedrick replied, “That’s what they said. And they had enough money on them, so it certainly looked like it.”

Fendig frowned and looked through his documents again. He shook his head, looking confused. “I don’t know where the attack could have taken place, then. No one has reported any trouble at all.”

“That is odd,” Julian murmured.

Raedrick shrugged, however. “Well whatever. We’ll figure it out eventually.” Turning back to Malory, he cleared his throat. “We’ve been making better progress with our recruits than I expected. I think they’re almost ready to take into action.”

“Well that’s good. What did you have in mind?”

“Now that we know the location of their base, we’re going to deploy some of our men to keep an eye on them. Once we know their operating patterns well enough, we’ll begin harassing them. If we hurt them enough, they may start thinking there are better places to be than here in Glimmer Vale.”

Constable Malory did not look impressed. “No offense, but your last plan didn’t work out very well. Why should this one turn out any differently?”

“Because this is not their plan, Mr. Malory, it is mine,” Melanie said in her best, most condescending tone. Annoying as it was to be on the receiving end of that tone of voice, Julian had to admit it was effective.

The Constable blinked, looking defensive all of a sudden. “I appreciate that, Mistress Klemins, but -”

“Do you have a better idea, Constable?" asked Raedrick.

Malory thought about it for a moment, then shook his head with a shrug.

“In that case, we’d like your help.’

“Anything we can do.”

* * *

Malory stomped his feet and hugged his arms tightly across his chest, rubbing his upper arms vigorously. It was bloody freezing. When he said anything we can do, he thought Baletier would ask him to help prepare defenses around town or something. Not sit out in the middle of nowhere all night and freeze his tail off.

He and one of Baletier’s fishing men, Gilroy, were camped on a hilltop near a great crack in the hillside. Baletier and his friend called it a chasm, but that was a misnomer if ever Malory heard one. It was more a chimney than a chasm. But then, Baletier did not strike him as much of an outdoors man. Probably never tried his hand at climbing mountains, or he would have known the difference. There was no way that thirty to forty men were encamped in that little crack, so what in the hell was he doing here? He would bet two to one this was just some scheme to get him out of town so those two and their little trollop could do gods knew what-all without interference.

“This is a waste of time,” he grumped.

Gilroy shook his head, looking at Malory with a mocking grin. “You didn’t have to come, Constable.”

Malory scowled. He didn’t have to take that from a fishing man. He opened his mouth to retort, but stopped. “What are you doing, Gilroy?”

“Filling in a hole.”

“I see that. Why? That’s the second hole you’ve dug in the last ten minutes.”

Gilroy spread his hands in an ‘no idea’ kind of way. “Just doin’ what the lady told me.”

“How’s that?”

Gilroy stood and picked up a small bag that was sitting on the ground next to him. Fishing inside it, he pulled out a small object and held it out to Malory.

“She said to take these and bury them in a ring around our campsite. Wouldn’t say why.”

Malory accepted the object and turned it over in his fingers. It was just a small piece of rock, mica from the look of it, with a small engraving of a person crouched beneath a shelter of some kind on one side.

“What is this?”

“Don’t know. She just said to bury them with the carving facing outward and we would be safe through the night.”

Great. Superstitious nonsense. That was all he needed. It was bad enough the Mayor insisted on shackling him with that pair, but now they brought a bloody-minded woman into it with a bunch of silly notions. He shook his head vigorously.

“I’ll have none of that foolishness. Rocks to keep us safe?” He snorted and tossed the rock off into the grass. “Safe from what?”

Gilroy gasped as Malory threw the rock away. “Sir, she said it was very important,” he said, and he bounded off in search of it. How he thought to find it in the quickly fading light was beyond Malory.

“Get back here, Gilroy, you fool.”

Gilroy hesitated. He looked back and forth between the grass and Malory, indecision on his face. Malory scowled and waved vigorously for him to come back. “Now, Gilroy!”

The fishing man looked one last time at the grass where the rock fell then nodded and walked back to camp, his eyes downcast. “She was very specific, Constable.”

He snorted again. “Specifically foolish.” Malory turned and stomped over to the edge of the hill. The last of the light was just about gone, but he could just make out the valley below, and the bottom of the chimney. Nothing moved down there. Nothing would all night either.

To hell with it. Damned it he was going to stay up all night for nothing. He threw himself down onto the ground and pulled a blanket over himself. “You’ve got the first watch,” he growled to Gilroy, then he rolled over to go to sleep.

* * *

Gilroy ran. Despite the burning in his lungs from breathing the cold night air. Despite the crushing pain in his side and the wetness running down his hip and thigh. Despite the fatigue that made his legs feel like rubber. Despite every part of his body screaming at him to stop, to rest.

He ran because to not run was to die.

He couldn’t hear his pursuers any more, but he knew they were back there, somewhere in the darkness. They had been on his tail for hours, it felt like. To think they had decided to stop chasing him now after all that time was foolhardy at best.

So he kept on running.

They came just after midnight, as he was turning over the watch to the Constable. It had taken forever to wake him up, and then he had done nothing but grumble before finally getting up to take the watch. But then Gilroy figured that’s why he had become Constable in the first place. He would have been kicked off even the slackest boat on the lake inside of a week. Until recently, there was not much for the Constable to do in the Vale except tell himself how important he was; Malory was custom-made for that sort of job.

Gilroy lay down and wished again that Raedrick and Julian had not forbidden fires. It was going to take forever to get to sleep in the cold, especially with Malory stomping around. Eventually, he managed to set aside his general discomfort and doze off.

The sound of a twig snapping startled him to wakefulness. Sitting upright, he ignored the rush of cold as his blanket fell off his body and looked around. Malory stood off to the side, closer to the edge of the chimney, looking down into the valley.

“Did you hear that?" Gilroy whispered as urgently as he dared.

Malory turned his head toward Gilroy and sniffed. “Go back to bed or I will.”

“No really. I heard something.”

Gilroy stood up. As he did, he heard a soft whistling, then something slammed into his side and sent him tumbling back to the ground.

For a heartbeat there was no pain, only the shock of impact and an unusual feeling of pressure. Then that all gave way to agony.

He heard himself cry out before he realized he was doing it. Anxiously grasping at his side, his hand came to rest on a long, thin piece of wood.

An arrow.

On the other side of the camp, Malory shouted an oath. Gilroy looked toward him and saw several dark shapes emerging from the undergrowth around the camp.

They advanced on the Constable. He drew his sword and made an attempt at fighting back, but it was obvious he was not going to last long before they brought him down beneath the weight of their numbers.

In a panic, Gilroy clawed at the dirt, crawling away from the Constable and his attackers. He had to get away!

He felt a flash of shame but forced it down. There was nothing he could do for Malory; he had to take his own life into consideration now.

Gilroy reached a small tree near the edge of the camp and, grabbing hold of the trunk, pulled himself to his feet. He almost collapsed again; every movement sent a new rush of pain from his wound. But he managed to keep his feet.

Leaning against the tree for a moment, he looked back and saw Malory pinned to the ground beneath a great bear of a man. Three others stood nearby, one of them grasping at his arm as though wounded. That was something at least.

“Tie him up,” ordered the wounded one in an unexpectedly high tenor. “Where is the other one?”

“He went down over there…”

One of the others turned to point toward where Gilory had fallen and breathed a curse when he saw that Gilroy was no longer there.

“Find him, you fool,” barked the leader.

Gilroy did not need any more encouragement. He turned and ran as fast as he could.

Which, admittedly, was not very fast. Every step was new agony as the arrow wrenched in his wound. He became light-headed from the pain and exertion and from the knowledge that they would catch up to him any moment.

Yet somehow they did not, and he found himself still running, though in honesty it was more a slow, hunched jog than a run.

At some point, he could hardly remember when, he had snapped the arrow off in the wound. It hurt enough that he actually passed out for a moment, but he managed to make better time without the shaft impeding the movement of his arms.

Gilroy managed to smile in spite of it all. There ahead of him, as the western sky began to lighten from the pre-dawn glow, he could just make out the Eastflow. He was almost home.

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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Thanks for reading! See you in the next chapter!