Chapter 1
I came home from the shipyards to find my father dying and my mother already dead in his arms. She had been brutally murdered, her skull bashed in so that her face no longer resembled the beautiful woman that I had known all my life. That men had flocked to from all the towns and cities to see for themselves, or so my father had boasted. Her glorious red-brown hair was mostly red---her violet eyes blank with that strange emptiness that defined a departed soul.
My father lay under the remains of the porch in trampled mud with both my mother’s blood and his own in a pool around him. His rifle was near him, broken at the stock but had been fired.
“Toby,” he called my name in a whisper and I dropped to my knees beside him. His wounds were massive and I couldn’t believe he was still alive. I wanted to do something, anything to help but could only flutter helplessly. I stroked the ruins of mother’s face and bawled.
“Dad, what happened?” I asked, finally getting my ravaged emotions in check. My eyes roamed over the two story cottage in the meadow that our three hands had raised. The barns and fields all wrought with honest labor and not slavery. Four hundred hectares of prime Upper Caladienne land in a small valley fed by ice cold streams coming down from the glaciers of Tenesk.
Secluded. Mostly peaceful with only an occasional hunter or trapper coming through. My dad was a peaceable man but wary, he’d have kept his rifle handy except for neighbors. Or kin. Most of ours were still back in Gleneden and Ehrenberg, the capitol across the Great Sea.
“What happened?” I asked again. The barns were still standing, the front part of the cottage torn down as if a giant wind had come through it.
“Masked men on big horses,” he gasped. “Stole the barn horses. Took the new stallion. Wore the uniform of the Baron’s Rangers.”
I was silent. We had just spent a year’s worth of earnings on that stud horse, destined to be the foundation sire of the farm. My father was the impoverished son of a Gleneden Lord who had immigrated to the newly opened lands before the Border War to start his own empire. The empire of the race horse, one of the few ways a younger son or commoner could elevate himself to the ruling classes. Five years later, he had spent every bit of his hard earned cash to purchase a little known grandson of the famous Eclipse and have him shipped at great expense to the port city of Albans and on to Caladia. All three of us had made the three-day trip to the closest town only a month ago and brought the small 15.2h dark bay stallion home behind the farm wagon. He was dwarfed by the immense work horses but far outshone them in quality. A gleaming dark mahogany color, he had only one white foot and that was the off hind but he did have a small star on his forehead. I memorized his unusual cowlick, a large wheatear on his chest, and swirls on his legs above his chestnuts shaped like fox heads. A feather shape on his flanks where the hairs swirled from his belly. He carried his tail to the left, indicating a right-sided horse and he picked his hooves up in that delicate daisy paddle. His weight was no more than 800 lbs and his head was lean, dished and with a wicked eye. He nipped, reared and struck at his handlers. Their comments as they handed him over to my father had been one of relief.
“Right bastardy he is. Sorry, mum,” the crewman said. “All the way from Gleneden.” He handed my father the packet of papers containing his pedigree and receipts, all stamped and embossed with the Earl’s wax seal. My grandfather, the Earl of Gleneden and the Warlord of the Emperor of Ehrenberg, of the great kingdom across the sea.
No one seemed to care or watch us as I took the lead and tied the stud to the back of our wagon. I remained near him, talking foolish nonsense all of the three day ride home.
My father wasn’t one to boast but after a few mugs of Caladienne ale, he had let slip in the Depot that the little bay was of royal blood and that made a few ears perk up.
Dad tugged on my arm and brought me back to the present. His mouth twisted and blood pooled. He spat weakly and I saw bright frothy blood, I knew that meant he was lung shot. My heart ached and I didn’t know what to do. The closest neighbor was a day’s ride and was an older man who did not know first aid. There were no healers close, they were too valuable a commodity to risk out in the Wilds.
“Was the Lemieux brothers, Toby. I recognized them. That’s why they shot us. Tried to burn the house down but your mother stopped them. They ran their horses over her, hit the house and went through it. They took Diomed and the mares, four were in the barn. Turned the rest out, ran to the hills.” I waited. “Toby, go after them. Bring my horses back. You can do it. You can track them.”
“You can count on me, Dad,” I said swallowing the lump in my throat.
“Tobias Lynette Swan Spencer,” he said and his eyes filmed as he left me.
I buried my parents under the old apple tree, said to be one of the original trees planted by the first Rangers to explore this land. I carved their names into the simple wooden plank cross promising a marble stone on my return. Said my goodbyes to Lord D’Arcy George Simpson Spencer, second son of the Earl of Gleneden and Maleen Primrose Davenport, my mother, a young lady from a small village on the coast of Erhen.
I took a rucksack loading it with a spare shirt, trousers and socks, the last loaf of bread and journey cakes plus a side of smoked bacon and the emergency cash buried in a coal can in the woodlot. The fires in the kitchen and parlor had gone out but I made sure no dormant sparks could torch what was left of my house. Lastly, I tucked in my waistband my father’s Dragoon pistol, a memento from his service in his father’s Hussars. Looked around one last time and pulled the last book I’d started to read from the bookshelves. Tucked it into my shirt and took dad’s greatcoat with its many capes as it was warmer than my cloak. I already wore my drab green and brown woodsman’s vested shirt and loose pants with leather boots good for walking or riding.
Outside, I whistled, two sharp blasts between my fingers as I walked down to the stone barn. Gambrel, two storied and built of the stones we’d pulled from the cleared fields, its loft was full of hay and had enough stalls for a dozen horses and several milk cows. We even raised a few beefers. The hogs were out in the rear pens and I turned everything loose to fend for themselves. The milk cows had calves on them so milking them would not be a problem.
By the time I had freed all the livestock, the rest of the horse herd had come up out of the woods and entered the stalls to eat the bait of corn I’d left in the mangers.
I kept the gelding Beau and the mare Peony, both animals were broke to ride and the new stud tolerated them. I saddled the gelding and packed a few things on the mare as extra halters, feed and gear. I let the others loose and while they were still eating, mounted and left them behind.
The trail out of the valley followed the creek and I didn’t pass another homestead for at least two hours. I wasn’t following tracks but aiming straight for the woods and caves reputed to be the holdouts of the Lemieux Brothers.
There was a whole clan of them, buying and selling horses. Rumors had it that they would steal your team and disguise it, sell them back to you and you’d swear you’d never seen them before. I’d heard that they sold mostly down to the horse markets in the southlands, and to the local government council for remounts to the war.
The woods were quiet but never truly silent. The wind whispered or roared through the trees depending on the seasons, leaves crackled like peanut brittle underfoot. Squirrels, chipmunks and birds hollered at me and I saw the white flash of a deer’s tail. Overhead, I saw the broad outline of a redtail and heard its sharp whistle.
When I heard the loon cry, I stopped the horses and eased my rifle out from the scabbard and waited. The trees rustled around me. I was on a deer trail that switch-backed up a hill with large pines and hemlocks above me. Oaks, maples, elms and chestnuts predominated below on the lower slopes. Not much brush as the trees were too thick and nothing could grow in the underbrush. Lots of rocks everywhere.
An explosion of partridges from above and to my right startled both me and the horses but I maintained my seat. I saw a black bear, it stood up and chuffed at me. We waited as the horses fidgeted and it ambled off. Still, I kept my rifle on it until the black ball of fur disappeared into the brush. Under me, the gelding relaxed, his ears flopped back and forth so I nudged him forward.
Atop the ridge, I found where a man had stood and watched us before he disappeared onto the lower slopes. Anyone who lived in or near the forest knew that a loon wouldn’t be this far from water, the nearest pond or lake was miles away.
From his tracks, I judged him to be a fairly good height and weight, his boot heels sank deep and his stride was over two feet long. He smoked, too but he hadn’t lit the cheroot while he observed me. In the woods, the smoke would have been a dead giveaway that humans were near.
I snickered as I saw where his tracks jumped when he’d spotted the bear. Tracking him as far as the next deer trail, a whole mess of agitated tracks spoiled my readings. They went off in twenty different directions and I had no clue as to which one I should follow. Even the tracks of Diomed weren’t clear enough to pick out so I just guessed and headed south in the general direction of the next village.
Two days travel brought me to Spiorad and the first place to which I was headed was the Constable’s office, a two story brick building next to the jail. Both were built of the local bluestone, quarried nearby and worked into an imposing edifice. Buggies, wagons and riding mounts were hitched up in front of the mercantile as I dismounted and tied the gelding to the hitching rings. An amulet and charm witch came to the door of her shop and stared at me. I ignored her, they were one step above a conman.
Oh, I was right glad to get down and stretch my legs, take the weight off my rear end and maybe get a hot meal and bath. The door to the Constable’s office opened with a shrill creak and I entered the administration hallway leading to a courtroom. There were several offices where a pot-bellied stove was burning busily along keeping out the chill of a late fall afternoon. The big windows were barred and looked out on a small yard between the office and the jail, I could see men walking about wearing manacles.
“Can I do something for you…boy?” A rough voice asked behind me as I turned around.
Broad shouldered, his shirt tails hanging out, his suspenders barely holding his trousers up behind a huge belly stood a man nearly a head taller than me with more hair than a marmot. He looked like a woodchuck, with a mustache waxed to points, heavy black brows over dark brown eyes. He wore a vest over a white shirt, both open showing off a pelted chest. He was the hairiest man I had ever seen and if I’d encountered him in the wood, I would have assumed him an ogre.
“My name is Toby Spencer. Tobias Spencer. I’m hunting four, maybe six men. Robbed and murdered my family back in Cayden’s Valley.”
“Old Gleneden’s son’s place?”
“My father.”
“Murdered your ma and pa? Right sorry to hear that, I am. You know who done it?”
I nodded. “My father recognized them. Said it was the Lemieux brothers.”
“You got any proof?”
I stared at him in disbelief. Proof? Didn’t the dying words of the murdered victim constitute proof? “When I find my horses that’ll be all the proof I need,” I retorted.
“You ain’t thinking of going after them yourself? That’s not your job, boy.” His eyes got really hard and ugly. Town constables were not responsible for events that happened outside the village limits, those jobs were usually taken on by the Rangers but the Lemieux brothers were Rangers.
“You going after them?” I asked and from his expression, I said, “Thought not. Where can I get a hot meal and a bath?”
“Plenty of eating places in this village. The Hotel has baths for rent. You got any kin?”
“In Gleneden.” I turned on my heel and went out onto the street hunting up a dining establishment that wasn’t too rich for my blood or my wallet.