Hellrien didn’t know what woke her up. For a moment she just lied still, staring at the shimmer that the glow of a massive fire created on the canvas wall of her tent. Then she realized what was causing it.
A fire!
At once she was up and got dressed. She peeked outside of the tent to look at the moon. It was the time of late watches. She grasped her hat and scabbard belt and ran out of the garrison. To the south she saw the flames arising above rooftops. People were running on the street half-dressed. Both the Watch and the Dawn were alarmed.
”It’s Mr. Cranes’ house!”
Hellrien stopped dead in her tracks. She bit her lip. A sudden intuition struck her. Could it be…! She ran down the street. Adjutant Fenrush was up. He was trying to instruct the Dawners in putting out the fire the best he could.
”The fire is spreading!” he shouted to Hellrien. ”The nearby buildings are all ablaze!”
Hellrien didn’t care about Fenrush or the nearby buildings. Instead she kept running south, towards the market square.
Finally she turned the corner and saw the Mayor’s residence. The house leaning against the cliff was dark, it looked like everyone was asleep. Hellrien stopped at the bottom of the stairs to draw breath. It was quiet. Too quiet! Why had nobody woken up to the fire and upheaval in town?
She drew her swords and ran up the stairs. The glow from the fire shed dim light on the facade. She listened. Somebody was moaning quietly. She followed the sound to the door and listened through the keyhole. She grasped the doorknob and cursed. Locked. She took a running start and threw herself against the door. The door almost burst and flew open in fierce momentum. She followed a dim flicker of light into a bedroom. There was a dim lantern burning on the table. Somebody was squirming on the bed – half-suffocated and red-faced. Hellrien pulled the gag out of his mouth, and the secretary gasped his breath.
”What happened!” Hellrien snarled.
”I was beaten unconscious! It was one of your Dawners who came here to ask for the Mayor! Well, I told him Mayor Shelton is not here, he went to Bree yesterday! But the moment I stuck my head out of the door – bang!”
”What do you mean, one of our Dawners?”
”It was Crambe, from The Bloody Dawn”, the secretary said hoarsely. ”He has been here often lately – offering his company to Mrs. Shelton for her walks. He has really ingratiated himself to the Mayor and his wife.”
Hellrien turned. Why was she unaware of that? ”Where’s Maria’s room?”
”End of the hall to the right.”
Hellrien saw that the door was cracked. She ran to it. A nightgown had been tossed on the dressing table. She ran back. Somebody rushed in from the main door. It was Blue Nose – Undersergeant Blunoss.
”Hellrien! Why aren’t you with the others, putting out the fire?”
”Mrs. Maria Shelton has been taken from her home! She’s been kidnapped! What do you know about Crambe?”
”Crambe? He and two others are missing – Bottlebrush and Hemlock. And Bluebeard and Blackthorn are dead. Nobody was guarding the Span! And Mr. Cranes burned inside his house – it’s a disaster!”
”What do you know about Crambe, sir?”
”Only that he’s rubbish. One of the new recruits I keep getting here – I’ve been looking for an excuse to dismiss his sorry ass since I first saw him. Nothing but trouble from the start.”
When they had managed to extinguish the fire the sky was already starting to pale in the east. A chat with Blunoss and Fenrush completed the picture for Hellrien. An unknown person had set fire on Mr. Cranes’ house in the middle of the night. The fire had killed Mr. Cranes and his housekeeper. At the same time Private Crambe of The Bloody Dawn had appeared at Mayor Shelton’s house and asked for the Mayor. When the secretary had told him the Mayor was not in town, he had attacked and gagged the secretary and kidnapped the Mayor’s wife.
Five Dawners had been on shift to guard the Span tonight – Crambe, Bottlebrush, Hemlock, Bluebeard and Blackthorn. Bluebeard and Blackthorn had been found dead, along with a couple of guards from the Trestlebridge Watch. And Crambe, Bottlebrush and Hemlock were missing.
Hellrien sat down and lit a pipe. There was no point in riding out after them before dawn. Perhaps she could find their tracks, but not before light. She stood up and paced back and forth. She had lost more than a stone of her weight and now weighed about two hundred pounds, looking considerably slimmer and healthier than only a month ago.
Finally the dawn came. Hellrien saddled up and rode over the Span to the North Downs. It started raining. There was no point in looking for tracks here. There were too many of them. When she came to a crossing where a smaller path diverged from the Greenway towards east she slowed down. She hunched down from the saddle, examining the ground. She could see fairly fresh tracks there. Three sets of hoof prints. She rode on. She could see a big rock and a shattered tree from a distance. Perhaps a lightning or a heavy storm had caused the tree to snap from the middle, so that the top part was leaning on the trunk and the rock behind it. The broken tree marked the spot like an x and stirred her instincts.
There had to be something here!
At once she found the dark, sticky trail of blood from the ground. The grass had caved in on one side of the path. She followed the tracks. From the other side of the rock she found Hemlock, a big knife sticking in his chest. Bottlebrush lied beside him. His neck was broken, and his head was distorted in an unnatural angle. Hellrien looked at Hemlock’s face. Even in death they seemed to reflect amazement and rage. His dry, lifeless eyes were full of ants.
Hellrien looked about. She had seen enough. She went back to the path. Birds were singing in the trees, and the grass was wet with rain. It was cool, the sun was barely up. She could see the pickets far on the hill up east. It was the orc encampment. Surely Crambe couldn’t be heading in that direction?
She found a lot of tracks where two horses had fled in panic. If they hadn’t found their way back to Trestlebridge, patrolling orcs must have caught them for food. She found more tracks behind the shattered oak. A couple of caved in blades of grass, a couple of broken branches. Then she looked deeper at the shrubland. Damn, it would be hard to follow the tracks there in this rain! The grass was like a rubber mat. She began riding in circles. She found a few tracks but they weren’t clear enough to be sure. Finally she found a small stone that had arisen from it’s hole. She rode on. It was slow. A broken branch, a few hairs on wet leaves, a mark that a sword blade had left on bark as it had grazed it. Crambe had been riding in the dark, and that’s why Hellrien managed to follow his tracks. Once she climbed on top a low ridge. She looked behind her. A blue-gray, ominous cloud of smoke was floating above Trestlebridge. The tracks kept going down the slope to northeast making a curve eastwards. She lost the tracks near the chasm, took a risk and descended a steep slope to the shore of the stream. She was soaking wet with rainwater as she started looking for tracks in the riverbank. She crisscrossed here and there but found no tracks. Her intuition told her that Crambe must have ridden into the water to cover his tracks and shake his potential pursuers off his trail. Upstream or downstream? Upstream would have meant back towards Trestlebridge and Nan Wathren, surrounded by unclimbable rock faces on both sides as far as she could see. Downstream meant further into the North Downs, towards Annundir and Kingsfell. The latter option felt more plausible.
It was already midday. Hellrien undressed her cloak and hauberk and hung them on the saddle. She could only imagine the ruckus going on in Trestlebridge – fire, heated meetings between the Dawn and the Treslebridge Watch, scouts and messengers riding out in all directions – with orc patrols on the prowl for the unwary. By the Valar, if only she could manage to stay away from that cauldron!
Hellrien stopped on the hill above a riverbend to consider. Blue Nose wouldn’t be happy about her taking the initiative to ride out to pursue Crambe and his hostage without an order to do so. She had simply informed Fenrush where she was going, Blue Nose be damned. Everything indicated that Crambe couldn’t have gone very far, not with a hostage. Why had he kidnapped Maria? To ask for ransom? It seemed the most likely explanation. But one thing was certain – he had to have a place to hide his hostage somewhere near!
But where?
Hellrien stood up against her stirrups. It was wild country. Steep cliffs, rolling hills, deep chasms where the tributary of Brandywine rushed and streamed from Nen Harn. There were thousands of hideouts here.
Thoughts kept spinning in her head as she tried to make sense of what had happened. Crambe, Bottlebrush and Hemlock had all decided to betray The Bloody Dawn and kidnap the Mayor’s wife to extort ransom. During a night when they had all been on shift to guard the Span they had killed Bluebeard, Blackthorn and a couple of Trestlebridge watchmen. One of them had likely stayed on guard by the Span while two others had ventured into town. Crambe had gone to the Mayor’s residence where he had subdued the secretary and taken Maria as hostage. The other one had set fire on Mr. Cranes’ house… why, though? To create a diversion? Or had he first broken into the house to look for his gold? Perhaps, but something about the whole plan seemed a little off. Hellrien couldn’t help but feel like there was something she was missing, that she wasn’t seeing the whole picture here. From Trestlespan they had turned east, towards the big orc encampment looming on the horizon. After a short ride Crambe had turned on Hemlock and Bottlebrush, killed them by the big rock and turned north with his hostage. It seemed likely that he had a hiding place he had sought out in advance, somewhere to hide Maria. This hiding place had to be so close to Trestlebridge he could ride there during the night. The hostage had to be somewhere safe by dawn. How far could a man ride at night with a prisoner, when he only had five or six hours? Fifteen miles at most. More likely only ten. Maybe not even that far in a difficult terrain.
Hellrien’s eyes flashed beneath the slouch of her hat. The hideout had to be close! What was happening now? What was happening to Maria Shelton?
