Demontech Gulf Run

CHAPTER ONE "This is a good place; we'll pull off there," Haft said softly. He used hand signals to show his men where to leave the road and where to go. "Here" was where the winding road made a narrow cut through a spur of the Princedon Mountains, the range that formed the spine of the Princedon Peninsula. The ridge was heavily wooded on both sides of the cut, boulders barely visible among the trees on the right, upland, side of the cut. Haft's nine men, eight of them in the mottled green of the Zobran Border Warders, continued fifty yards beyond the cut to where Haft had indicated before carefully climbing the far side of the ridge and back to its top, leaving no sign that they'd left the road. The first man off the road clambered up a tree to watch their back trail. The other eight men filtered through the trees, seeking places where they would be hidden from the road and protected by stones or stout tree trunks while being able to observe where it climbed the ridge. They strung their bows and readied arrows, drew their swords or axes and lay them near to hand. Haft moved from man to man, checking his position and view. The road ran straight for nearly a hundred yards from this vantage point before turning sharply left. Its farthest reaches were deeply shadowed. He moved two of his men to positions offering better fields of vision and fire. "One," he said to the first man, clasping his shoulder. "Wait for me." The former Border Warder nodded. "Two," he said to the second, who grunted in reply. "Wait for me," he repeated. "Three," to another. And so he went along his thin line, assigning to each his target in the enemy's line of march. The eighth man-the one not in the Border Warders mottled green grab-was Jatke, a hunter from the town of Eikby. When all were in position, he took his own place in the middle of the line and lay his broadaxe and crossbow ready to hand. From there, through a break in the trees, he had a clear if shadowed view of the bend in the road. Haft hadn't picked the best fighters for this squad-those were probably the Skraglander Bloody Axes who had sworn fealty to him. This was the rear point of the large band of refugees he and Spinner, his fellow Frangerian Marine, were trying to lead to a safe place away from the Jokapcul invaders overrunning the Princedon Peninsula. More important than the best fighting ability on the exposed rear point was the ability to move quietly and stealthily. The Border Warders were adept at stealthy movement and quicker than the Bloody Axes to spot followers. They also needed clear and quick communications; the Border Warders all spoke Zobran and the Eikby hunter spoke a dialect of it-he could understand the Border Warders well enough, and they him. Haft's own harbor Zobran, picked up during several port calls at Zobra City and sharpened by travel with the refugees over many weeks, was easily intelligible to these men, and he understood them as well-provided they didn't talk too fast or use words he didn't know. And not to be underestimated, they all carried the longbow, which shot its arrows with enough force to penetrate the metal-studded leather of Jokapcul armor. He looked at the demon spitter he carried and cautiously tapped on the small door on the side of the tube. The door popped open, nearly catching his fingers, and the small, naked demon poked its head out. "Wazzu whanns?" the tiny demon piped at him. "See the road?" Haft whispered. The demon looked down the length of the demon spitter tube. "Yss. Whatch abou id?" "Look to the left. See the break in the trees? And the road through it?" "Yss. Zo?" "Can you spit through that break and hit horsemen on the road?" The demon clambered all the way out to the top of theSherman, David is the author of 'Demontech Gulf Run' with ISBN 9780345443762 and ISBN 0345443764.