Engines & Demons - The Undestined

Chapter 47i

Sir Kralaford slowed Hakansa's pace as they entered the valley. His dark beast was panting with exertion, but he knew his steed and was confident in the depths of his stamina, and was not worried as the land began to rise and Hakansa forged upwards.

He and his four companions had crested the rise of land above the grass-turtle bog a half hour before to find the first of Solridge's plateaus stretched in front of them. The land was a rolling green vale, strung with the same fading flower grass that marked the grasslands around Klinberg. Though the time for the nipeflies had gone, a single flock of widdershins still hunted there, skimming low over the ground in the hope of scooping up a last morsel before their hunger took them south. The plateau was backed by a sheer rise of grey rock, cut by valleys from which streams tumbled, and it had been into one of those narrow defiles that Sir Kralaford had seen his quarries fleeing.

The distant riders had been driving their mounts upwards beside a steep falling stream, and he had wasted no time in urging Hakansa forward into his fastest pace. As they climbed the last fold of land and entered the shadow of the hanging valley, he slowed because his son's kidnappers had run out of space to flee. The valley did not cut through to the plateau above, but ended in a slab of steep rock down which white water tumbled to a pool that fed the valley's stream.

His quarry was trapped. Now they would pay.

The valley had once been used to farm whitestep, but the workings had been abandoned when the Clans had taken Solridge. Everything of value was long stripped away, and the place had become a ghost of itself. Two walls of the farmhouse remained, the stones of the others tumbled around its foundations, though the thick domed roofs of the smoke houses still stood, too well made to be casually destroyed. Everything that could be burnt had been robbed to feed the fires of the outlaws who had taken residence in Solridge's lawless borders. Even the props from the growing shafts were gone, and many of the tunnels that had been dug into the valley's steep sides had fallen in, or had mouths contorted by slumped earth.

Only one large tunnel at the valley's far end, which had been dug against some protruding bedrock and had its arch clad in stone, remained complete, and it was there that Sir Kralaford saw one of his prey. A single hydrayet and its rider stood before the tunnel's darkness, inspecting it as though it might offer a means of escape, but before Sir Kralaford and his companions could move towards him, he turned and saw them standing at the valley's edge. The man had sparse clan-marks on his arms, and even from the distance between them the mark of outcast was clear on his forehead.

Sir Kralaford heard him call a warning, and another man appeared in a window of the farmhouse ruins where, it seemed, the other kidnappers had taken refuge. Sir Kralaford urged Hakansa forward.

"Sir!" said the remaining scout, whose steed seemed agitated and was growling and sniffing, her ears laid back and her claws raking in the grass. "There is danger here."

"I know," said Sir Kralaford, and he did.

That the man mounted on the hydrayet was a bandit was clear from his raged clothes and worn armour, and Sir Kralaford knew the man would know the land well enough not to have unwittingly led his party into a place that offered them no escape.

"Stay here," he said. He pointed at his remaining messenger. "Both of you."

Then he commanded Hakansa forward again.

Sir Hogan and Sir Beddingvale followed.

"Spread out."

With that command, they divided as they approached the abandoned farmhouse. Hakansa loped straight over its fallen stones, dark paws brushing through the thick grasses growing among them. Sir Beddingvale put distance between himself and Sir Kralaford, and went right, close to the tumbled beach where the stream fell white through its ragged bed. Sir Hogan skirted left around the building's standing gable. The hydrayet rider still stood above in the tunnel's shadow. He had not moved, but he had drawn his sword.