“I need to go talk with Rigel,” Tibs called to his patrol partner over the wagon, then urged his horse forward without waiting for her reply. There was a faint point of life essence ahead. Focusing on it, there was also some metal, so most likely a traveler on horseback.

  Graiden narrowed his eyes at him as they passed each other and Tibs rolled his shoulder to show the exercises had given him full motion. He might have recuperated too fast, by the continued suspicion on the guard chief’s face, but there was only so much playing at not being fully healed Tibs could endure.

  “Tyborg,” the caravan leader greeted him from his wagon’s bench. “Here to let me know you want to scout ahead?”

  “No.” Tibs chose casual over offended. “How are we for time? Did we make up what the storm cost us?” all in all, the damage the bad weather had caused the caravan had cost them nearly four days of travel.

  Rigel peered ahead. “Unless your gut says we’re going to have trouble, we should reach the next village under two weeks.”

  “Are we passing it by?” he asked, instead of acknowledging the comment.

  “No. With the little extra time we’ve been riding every day, and as peaceful as a trip as you’ve made this one be, we’ll make everything up before we reach Brokentia. Whatever your plans are there, you won’t be late.”

  Tibs had no plan for that city; it didn’t have a dungeon. But its university meant he’d want to take the time until the caravan left looking through its books for anything worth staying there longer. A university’s book collection wasn’t always as broad as a library, and the merchants who were familiar with Brokentia hadn’t been able to tell him much about the university’s interests.

  “So, it’ll be a full day in Iritel, as well as the other village between—”

  “Traveler incoming!” a guard yelled, hand shielding her eyes. “Fast!”

  Tibs shifted his attention, and she was right. The rider had traveled closer than he’d expected, but he could barely make out the raised dust in the distance.

  “What is it?” Graiden asked, joining them.

  “I can’t tell,” she said, still looking in the distance. “But at that speed, it could be trouble.”

  Not from the rider.

  “Stop the caravan!” Graiden yelled.

  “Gray.” Rigel sighed as the order was picked up by the other guards. “We were barely making up the time.”

  “And what’ll happen to your abyss schedule if we ride into an ambush?”

  Tibs pushed his sense as far as it would go, but couldn’t sense anyone else. Focusing on the rider again, he determined that trickle of life essence wouldn’t kill him, but that he wasn’t faking the injuries they’d see.

  “I can barely see the dust. It can’t be anything large.”

  “Love,” the chief said through gritted teeth, “if you want to put yourself in charge of the guards, you have my blessing to then tell everyone what to do.” He locked eyes with the other man. “Until then, you put your safety in my hands. Your schedule can go f—”

  “Graiden!” Rigel cut him off, offended. “I will not have you use that kind of language outside of our tent.”

  The chief shook his head and Tibs couldn’t tell if he was annoyed or amused. The comment had attracted attention, but Tibs hoped there would be no details.

  He enjoyed banter between people who were special to each other, but only so long as they kept what happened in the privacy of their tent out of it. It was a reminder of the good part of bantering among his old friends.

  The raised dust became visible to everyone and was small enough they agreed it was a few riders at most. Then they made out the form of the lone horse and rider, and they picked this time to slow to a trot.

  Tibs sensed beyond them again. A recent injury meant trouble, but there were no mass of people, or even hints of life other than the animals. With a breath, he pushed his sense further still. There had to be something and lone bandits would have pursued the rider. It had to be a group for them not to pursue an attack of opportunity. Not enough to gain for the energy a chase would expend.

  He stopped when the headache became too much and still hadn’t sensed anything out of the ordinary. He applied a Purity etching, but as usual, it did little to help with these types of headaches.

  Graiden took Misheal with him and they met the rider well away. They spoke, then escorted him, Tibs could now tell, to the caravan.

  The man was short and lean; in lightweight leathers for travel more than protection. The satchels attached to the horse were heavy leather, with good metal locks. Not something that would keep a skilled thief out, but the work needed would give time for people to notice.

  A courier. The kind people who couldn’t afford to pay the messenger’s guild used.

  The messengers catered to nobles and merchants; those with coins and a need to have the delivery happen quickly. They had deals with the transportation platforms and charged accordingly.

  Couriers traveled by the best method affordable to them. They couldn’t assure of when a package would reach its destination; or that it even would. Traveling alone allowed for speed, but meant falling victim to bandits tended to be fatal.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  This man had managed to escape such a fate. The horse had a few healed cuts, but all superficial. The bandits had to have been on foot and without archers. They weren’t above sacrificing the value of a living horse, since feeding themselves was often more important.

  “Bandits,” Graiden told Rigel when they were within conversation range. Misheal was keeping the courier upright in his saddle, careful of the broken arm. Tibs couldn’t sense exhaustion, but he could see it on the man’s face. “Two days ahead, no more than three. He doesn’t know how many there could be.”

  “Three blocked the road,” the rider said, eyes unfocused, and not completely steady. “Racer rode through. The tallest hit me with a club, then we were through and I didn’t stop.”

  “The injury’s real,” Misheal said, and even exhausted, the rider looked at her in disbelief.

  Tibs’s sense had meant he never had to deal with tricks bandits used to get close to caravans, but he’d heard stories. People seeking shelters for the night, only to turn and slaughter the guards in the darkness, was a recurring one.

  “I’ll see to him,” Sarnita said, stepping to the horse. Graiden wasn’t pleased, but nodded.

  “We aren’t stopping,” Rigel stated.

  “Three means lookouts,” Graiden countered. “Which means there’s a camp near them. Doesn’t matter if it’s a dozen, twice that, or half. They attack the caravan and people get hurt.”

  “That’s two days on a courier’s horse at full gallop,” Rigel said. “It’s almost foaming at the mouth, so he barely stopped long enough to piss and keep from killing it. I say five days before we are close enough for them to see us. Are you telling me you don’t trust the people you’ve hired to have dealt with them by the time we’re two days away?”

  “Did he just tell Gray to leave him unprotected?” Jeremy whispered, next to Tibs. “I thought they were special to each other.”

  Tibs ignored the young man.

  “I’m going to have to take half the guards, Rig. If something happens while we’re dealing with them, you—”

  “Where are more bandits coming from, Gray? The sky? If there was anyone between us and them, this poor man wouldn’t have made it here to warn us. And half of the people you picked is plenty to deal with whatever happens to us while you’re away.”

  “Rig,” Graiden threatened.

  “It’s final, Gray. So you might as well get your people and start readying them to deal with this.”

  Graiden’s reply was grumbled, and only the unflattering tone carried, but Rigel smiled.

  “Alright,” the chief called, “I need—”

  Enough horses stepped forward that the sound of hooves covered what he said. Tibs was among them. He wished he’d known this was coming so he could deal with it without anyone aware there had been danger, but with fewer guards at the caravan, his absence would be noticed even in the night, and he’d need at least half a day to cross the distance.

  Among Graiden’s force, there would be a night when they were close enough he could run there, deal with the camp and return before they set out in the morning. He’d leave them to come up with how the camp had been decimated before they reached it.

  Graiden walked before them, sending some back. Many of them were the better veterans they had. He would make sure there were enough guard with experience with the caravan.

  “I’m going,” Jeremy stated when Graiden slowed by him and Tibs.

  The chief snorted, shook his head in annoyance, and started up again.

  Tibs wondered if the man was looking to get rid of Jeremy this way.

  “You’re going to get yourself killed, kid,” Arshmstil said. The older guard had enough scars that, in places, his tan skin was nothing more than pink masses of flesh.

  “I know how to fight.”

  “That’s not going to be a fight,” the man replied. “Fights are fair. Both side stop when it’s too much. This is going to be a massacre. If you aren’t willing to kill, you aren’t surviving what you volunteered for.”

  Jeremy looked about to be sick, but then straightened and smiled at Tibs.

  Tibs hated he was the reason for Jeremy’s brave face. He had no idea why the young man was determined to impress him, but he couldn’t control what he did. The only positive thing about it was that there would be no battle to test Jeremy’s mantle; because if there was, Tibs didn’t think he’d survive.

  * * * * *

  Tibs rubbed his temple. He’d been pushing too far, too often, for the Purity etching to do anything anymore, but he’d finally sensed something after the day’s hard riding. And with the sun approaching the horizon, this was a good time to deal with it.

  He hurried to the front.

  “I’m going to scout ahead,” he announced.

  “Stop!” Graiden ordered. “Abyss, don’t make me chase you, Tyborg.”

  Reluctantly, Tibs brought his horse to a stop, then turned around.

  “What do you think you’re going to find this far from them?” the chief demanded. “And don’t bring that gut of yours into this. I’m not Rig.”

  “But—”

  “Don’t.”

  Tibs closed his mouth, trying to come up with a reason.

  “We’re riding until the sun touches the horizon, then we’re setting camp. As soon as the sky lights the morning, we’re riding off. Once the sun’s two fingers high, then we’ll be close enough you can see me about being on the scouting teams.”

  They were closer than Graiden expected, but Tibs couldn’t tell him that. Either the courier had lost track of time, or he’d encountered lookouts expecting travelers in the opposite direction.

  “They might have lookouts hidden even this far, to send words a caravan’s on—”

  “I told you, no. Do you think the only way I became chief is because I bed Rigel?”

  Tibs snapped his mouth shut.

  “I don’t know what your thing is, Tyborg. If you think all this is nothing more than a bard’s song, or if all this scouting you do is about looking to die on your own. What I know is that you aren’t the reason this trip’s been quiet. They happen. Rig just likes you, and your constant ‘scouting’ plays into how he likes to see reasons in everything that happens. Take it from someone who’s been where you are. There’s nothing out there you want to deal with on your own. You want a team with you. The larger the better. And since you don’t seem to have the common sense to accept that, I’m going to see to it that you don’t throw your life into the abyss.”

  Tibs nodded.

  If he couldn’t get Graiden’s indirect approval, he’d act without it. Slipping out as soon as full dark happened would be simple. With air to help, he should be able to reach the camp, deal with the bandits, and return before they set out. If not? Well, Rigel had said they were two weeks away from a village. Tibs could hide there and—

  “You,” Graiden snapped, pulling Tibs out of his planning, “are going to stick by him like your life depends on it. And trust me, it does. If you let Tyborg out of you sight, I will skin you alive, is that clear?”

  “Yes, yes, sir. It is.” Jeremy’s excitement bubbled through his attempt at professionalism.

  “I don’t—”

  “Look,” Graiden cut him off. “I know you think that you can handle anything the world throws at you. That’s how we are when were young. We run off, have an adventure or two, come back and tell grand stories over ale to anyone who’ll listen. I told you. I’ve been where you are. That’s why I’m not letting you do this. I’d rather deal with you hating me than losing one of the few good men I’ve come across.”

  Short of telling the man everything he could do, he couldn’t win against someone who thought they were protecting him from himself. And even telling him everything might not help. Nothing in what Graiden said or did spoke of someone who disliked magic, and the people who wielded it, but nothing had shown he thought of them positively either. Tibs couldn’t risk finding out the man was simply good at keeping his dislike to himself.

  He rode away, Jeremy at his side.

  The young man looked over his shoulder, and in spite of the distance, spoke at a whisper. “I’ll go with you.”

  Tibs could have laughed at the absurdity Jeremy thought having him tag along would help anything.

  He shook his head.

  Once everyone slept, he’d go deal with the bandits.

  Bottom Rung is available on KU:

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