Honored Enemy by Raymond E. Feist Read Free Book Online Page A

Kingdom soldiers waited, he would be carrying word at this moment. Dennis knew what he must do.
    Get out, circle around, then warn off any Kingdom troops that might be approaching from the south. He knew he would have to stand up, glance around as if satisfied that no danger lingered and move quickly back to where his command waited. Let the moredhel think him a solitary scout. Dennis would not be returning this way, and neither would any Kingdom force if he could intercept them. Let the Dark Brothers and the Tsurani fight with each other for a while.
    The moredhel would not linger to occupy a human stockade, and if the Tsurani managed to drive them away, Duke Brucal, Earl Vandros of LaMut, and Baron Moyet could decide how to drive them out of here and Mad Wayne’s next spring.
    Dennis and his scouts had signals to use in these situations. He would remove his heavy cloak, shaking it as if he was trying to rid it of excess water. That would let Tinuva and Gregory know he was under scrutiny and they needed to withdraw without being seen.
    Dennis was on the verge of standing up to do just this when he saw the enemy. Stepping out of the forest, down on the south-west side of the clearing, a lone Tsurani appeared, easily picked out by his bright blue lacquered armour.
    Dennis grinned. Damned fool, typical of them. Make a big show of bravado. A new plan instantly formed in Dennis’s mind. Except for a couple of their best units the Tsurani were blundering fools in the forest compared to his Marauders. The moredhel had to know additional Tsurani were here. In fact, it lessened the likelihood the moredhel knew that Dennis’s unit was nearby. The trap was set for the Tsurani. Let the two sides slaughter each other while we slip away, or with luck the Tsurani will so weaken the moredhel we might even finish 33

    them both off and reclaim the fort for ourselves. This might actually get amusing , he thought with a wolfish smile, and then he heard the crack of a branch.
    ‘It is a trap,’ Force Leader Asayaga hissed, gesturing towards the smoking ruins of the stockade.
    Sugama said nothing, but Asayaga could already read what his second-in-command was thinking, and what he would do.
    The night march had been an exercise in stupidity and waste. Two hours of double-quick march in daylight could have brought them to this position, but instead they had endured a frigid, miserable night. His men were exhausted, shivering from the wretched cold, and the perverse gods of this world were sending down bucketful’s of snow.
    Now this damnable disaster. It was obvious that Force Leader Hagamaka of the Gineisa had launched the attack without waiting for the reinforcements Asayaga was bringing up. The thought of a Minwanabi ally failing so miserably, so publicly, might have brought Asayaga some pleasure, except for the sight of so many fine soldiers of the Empire dead, slaughtered in a futile battle. It was yet another tragic waste of good men. But why the urgent command for a night march through dangerous territory if Hagamaka wasn’t going to wait?
    He first suspected that Hagamaka had intended to embarrass him, to order reinforcements up, not wait and launch the attack, then accuse him of failing to arrive in a timely manner.
    Yet, as he surveyed the carnage, he wondered: it was obvious the attack had turned into a rout, a pile of nearly two score dead were clumped on a low rise not a hundred paces into the clearing, and a trail of dead led all the way back to the fort.
    No garrison of fifty Kingdom troops could have done this. Did they have more hidden inside the ruined fort, or a force waiting in the woods which had cut Hagamaka off ? Then, if so, why the abandoned fort?
    The Kingdom considered this a key link in their chain which guarded the shadowy northern front. From the Lake of the Sky’s eastern shore down to the northernmost peak of the Grey Tower 34

    Mountains, only the chains of stockades prevented the Tsurani from sweeping