As his anger at the Moonbrook garrison cooled, Amon turned his thoughts back to the dead men he had discovered the fortnight past. The men had been recovered and buried, the families notified. He considered that Liddy, in destroying the scrap of elven cloak, had made the right move. So far, there were no rumblings of war, nothing that he could hear, at least. He had as yet found no evidence of who or what had killed them. He considered that this may have been a random act.

  The road took him down along the southern slope of a jagged, unnamed peak as the road east of Moonbrook and Mountain Gate wound down toward the shore of Lake Sildar. A nearly sheer cliff rose on one side of the elven-made road that cut into the slope. The elf roads of Lath were legendary; paved with smooth pale stones that did not degrade under heavy wagon wheels. Gaian roads paled by comparison, as in all things.

  The waters of Lake Sildar stretched away to the south, the rim of the massive Stonewrought Dam just visible between the two low peaks that hemmed the reservoir in. Sunlight glittered brightly off the water, wind rippling the surface. The lake was hundreds of feet deep, the dam that created it built by the legendary dwarves a millennia ago. The dam held back the snowmelt-fed waters of the Ilyrin River and its vassal streams, protecting and feeding the fertile farmland to the south and the city of Stormgarde at the mouth of the river from the seasonal floods that had once inundated the region.

  Shade’s hooves beat an even rhythm on the smooth paving stones. The sound combined with that of the breeze in the boughs of the trees, almost hypnotizing. Days like this were rare on this island in the North Sea, barely a cloud in the sky, the sun warm and the lake gorgeous. Amon rode with his hood thrown back, enjoying the warmth.

  The hoofbeats grew discordant. Amon perked up, cursing himself for not paying attention. The odd sound was not coming from his horse, but from around a bend in the road up ahead. He halted Shade and listened. Three, no, four horses.

  Amon reached for his hood to pull it low over his head. Too late. The riders came trotting around the bend, riding two abreast. He was no stranger to encountering riders on the roads, though he preferred to do so with his horns hidden. He had expected a group of farmers, or merchants, or perhaps a contingent of Raith soldiers.

  The black riding leathers. The blood-red cloaks streaming from their shoulders. The sickle sigil on their shoulders. He had not seen those symbols in more than a century, yet he knew them in an instant.

  Seekers.

  Amon realized what they were in the same instant that they realized what he was. Four of them, each armed with steel swords at their hips, recurve bows at their backs. He was outmatched.

  “Demon!”

  As a one, the Seekers kicked their horses forward. Amon wheeled Shade about and dug his heels into the horse’s flank, sending him into a gallop. Hooves clattered on pale stones as Shade lunged uphill in huge, galloping strides. Amon leaned low over the horse’s neck, crouching in the saddle to unburden his back. He gave Shade his head, keeping his fingers light on the reins, only directing Shade around the switchback bends of the road, letting the horse maintain his speed.

  Amon and Shade raced up the narrow, twisting road, the horse sensing the urgency of his rider. Seekers, here on Tol Morad! He could not believe it if he had not seen them with his own eyes. No, this could not be. The Scarlet Brotherhood had not operated openly in Lath in more than a century. It could not be, but it was.

  Hooves clattered behind him. Amon did not dare to glance behind him, letting his ears keep him abreast of his pursuers. They were close, but not as close as he expected. He knew these roads, these mountains, they did not.

  The twisting road was the worst place for a headlong gallop that Amon could imagine. At least there were no potholes to contend with, but the paving stones, slightly roughened to provide purchase for the horses, oxen, and mules that pulled the wagons up and down, could be treacherous. If Shade were to slip a hoof, go down, they were both dead. He knew to rein the horse in at each curve, to stay as balanced as possible in the saddle, to let him have his head on the straightaways. He hoped that his pursuers did not.

  At last, Amon crested the top of the ridge. The road leveled out a bit. He gave Shade his head and the black horse shot forward, running flat out. He dared a glance back. The Seekers gained the ridge, red cloaks billowing out behind them.

  He had to lose them. In that glance back, he had judged their horses to be well-bred coursers, matched blood bays, long-legged and bred for hunting. Hunting horses, and he was the prey. Under him, Shade stretched out in a dead gallop, hooves barely touching the road surface.

  Shade had speed, but he was a mountain horse, sure-footed as a goat on winding deer trails, with the endurance to carry his rider from one end of the isle to another. The black gelding was outmatched by the sleek coursers. On the relatively flat straightaway, they gained.

  They would kill him if they caught him. Amon’s hand left the reins and lingered at the scar around his neck for just a moment. Would he die by sword, or would they hang him from an oak at a crossroads? He shook his head to clear that horrid image. No, if they caught him, he would force them to kill him quickly. He could do that, and take as many with him as possible.

  Four at once were too many. These were no bandits or highwaymen, ill-trained and poorly armed. These were Seekers, trained hunters from the Scarlet Brotherhood, warriors that trained with sword and bow from a young age. If he had come upon them by surprise, he might have been able to fell one or even two with his bow, even the odds, but these four would overwhelm him in close combat.

  Amon knew these roads. There was a sharp bend up ahead. He reined Shade around the curve, momentarily dipping out of sight of the Seekers. He set Shade back on his haunches, then pushed him to continue the turn, off the road and onto the hillside where the slope was not so extreme. Shade dug his haunches under him and lunged up hill.

  Trees whipped past, branches clawing at Amon’s cloak. Shade leapt fallen logs and crashed through deerbrush and bracken. He urged the horse uphill, leaning forward and digging his heels in with each lunge.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  He could only hope that in their haste, the Seekers would miss the spot where he had left the road and continue on past, sure that their prey was still on the road. Any ranger worth his steel would read the torn earth and know that a horse had gone up the hillside.

  Amon urged Shade on and on. At last, when his ears told him that no pursuit came up the hill after him, he slowed Shade. The black horse steamed with sweat, white foam streaming down from his neck and flanks.

  The ground flattened and Amon reined up. Shade was blowing and lathered. The road was just visible down below, through the trees. Down below, four horsemen galloped past, heedless and murderous, and were swallowed by the pines.

  He stroked Shade’s neck. The horse had saved his life. He considered his predicament. Four Seekers, the hunters of the Scarlet Brotherhood, were on the roads, now looking for him. If they caught him, he would die a horrible death.

  He considered that they had been looking for him, even before the encounter on the road. No doubt, every guardsman from Mountain Gate to Farshire would happily tell the story of the demon ranger, with his terrible yellow eyes and black horns, who haunted the mountains and dales of Tol Morad.

  One thing was now clear: the roads of Tol Morad were no longer safe. Fortunately, a ranger knew every path, not just the main ones. Goat trails and deer tracks crisscrossed the island from one end to the other. He did not need roads to travel by.

  Amon at last dared to let himself breathe. They were gone. They had not had their eyes open enough to see the place where he had left the road, despite the messy exit. They were blind in their eagerness, blind in their hate. The Scarlet Brotherhood was an ancient order, founded in the early days after the Great Cataclysm broke the world. It was magic that caused the world to shatter and they had sworn to see it stamped out. Or so their legends told. Witches, or sorcerers, or some other form of magic-user, had been responsible. Over the intervening centuries, their scope had broadened to include wargs and fae and nearly anything that was not gaian. Elves were only tolerated. But demons were their true hatred. Amon wasn’t entirely sure what his people had done in the eons past to make such a virulent, violent enemy, but it must have been terrible.

  Long moments passed with no sign of the red-cloaked riders. The woods were still. Gradually, birdsong returned. A squirrel flitted across a branch. Amon felt his heartrate slow from its panicked gallop. It might have all been a dream-a nightmare-but for the road torn by the passage of hooves.

  Amon turned Shade upslope to follow the deer trail. He loosened his fingers on the reins and made himself breathe. The Seekers were not stupid; they would, sooner or later, figure out that he had slipped their pursuit. They would backtrack until they found the spot where he left the road. The torn earth of the bank where Shade dug in to power up the slope was still there, plain enough to read for anyone who opened their eyes. He needed to approach this with a clear head. Panic would get him killed. He was better than that, he had learned to fight from the best. It was the sight of the red cloaks and the meaning behind them, that had shaken him so badly. It was the memories of his last encounter with men in red cloaks. The old scars, the ones he had tried to forget for so long, burned.

  The trail wound up and up through dense stands of silver fir and mountain pine. The gracile branches bent and snapped back as Amon passed between them. Ferron padded ahead, sniffing eagerly at chipmunk trails, pausing every now and then to growl at the cleverin that peered down from amid the silvery ghost moss in the canopy.

  His world was slowly settling back into a sense of normalcy. The forest was as he knew it; it was his domain, no one else’s. He saw the minute sign of the passage of rodents and songbirds, the subtle bending of leaf or branch that other trackers might miss, but none of it escaped his eye. He made a game of counting the black jays that flapped raucously amid the boughs. He liked those birds. Crow-sized, boisterous and bold, they were smart enough to remember people who were kind to them, who fed them, and those who were less than kind. They might bring gifts, shiny pebbles and the like, to those they liked, and mercilessly divebomb those that they perceived to have done them wrong. They were good luck.

  He counted 14 black jays in the first hour. Somewhere along the way, as the deer trail crossed a narrow saddle between two peaks, his hands stopped shaking. He had not detected any sign of pursuit. He had to be calm to think through his next steps.

  They were here, on his island. What were they doing here, and why were they openly displaying the red cloak and sigil? The Scarlet Brotherhood had not been allowed to operate in Lath, openly at least, for nearly a century and a half. One of the first Goding kings had banned their depredations and forbidden their operations within the borders. That same king even afforded demons, wargs and others nominal rights under the law of the land.

  The Scarlet Brotherhood was still there, of course. In the shadows. There were kidnappings. Herb women, woods witches, demons found hanged at crossroads. No one cared what happened to demons and witches and wargs. Just monsters, and good riddance. There were few demons living in Lath, and even fewer on the isles, a considerable selling point in Amon’s eyes, but just to the north lay Blackreach, the rugged land of mountains and rivers and sheer black cliffs that plunged to the sea, that was the demons’ last stronghold on Am’Theran.

  The Brotherhood had their stronghold, the Scarlet Tower, just beyond the Black Wall, the escarpment that formed the eastern border of Blackreach, in the region where the borders of Lath, Alftane and Blackreach met. They kept an iron grip on all trade flowing along the Demon Road. In the lawless frontier of northern Alftane, the Brotherhood could do as they pleased. Demons were killed on sight out there. The lucky ones were, at least.

  He would have to leave Tol Morad. That was the first thought that came to him. Those Seekers had seen him and that was enough to put them on his trail like a hound after a catamount. Whatever mission had brought them to Tol Morad, they would make the time to hunt him down. They did not know who he was, but they knew what he was, and that was enough.

  Tol Doril, that was an option. Just to the north of Tol Morad, it was a small island, rugged and densely forested, and mostly uninhabited but for a Grove and a smattering of tuala elves. Those pacifists would leave him in peace. He had thought about going to Tol Doril before, but Liddy had always talked him out of it. She wanted him to be “useful.” He hated being “useful.” Being used was more like it. He was her pawn. He knew it and she knew that he knew it, but he owed her his life and he wasn’t one to go back on his word. So he stayed and tried to find some use for his life on the isle. He hunted bounties, animal and man, trapped fur in the winter, guided rich fools who wanted to hunt mountain sheep, crag cats or griffins, and ran errands for Liddy whenever she beckoned. He would get out from under her thumb eventually.

  Part of him did not want to leave Tol Morad, though. This was his island. His! He had ridden these roads for more than 50 years. He had built his cabin in the shadow of Mount Basal, far to the north, in a hidden vale, built it with his own hands. That vale was his and his alone. The trappers from Farshire did not go there. The shepherds did not graze their sheep there. It was his, his domain he had carved from the wilderness. He drummed his fist on the saddle horn as he rode. Shade tossed his head uneasily at the sound. Amon made himself take a breath, calm down, and patted Shade on the neck. Staying was a foolish thought.

  The deer trail snaked higher into the mountains. Amon and Ferron passed below the Red Cliffs, heading north. He caught a view of the late afternoon sun glinting off Lake Sildar’s branching fingers far below. There was no sign of a red cloak.