Forgotten Warrior 2 - House of Assassins by Larry Correia

Author:Larry Correia [Correia, Larry]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9781481483766
Published: 2019-02-05T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 25

Several day’s journey from Neeramphorn lay the town of Haradas, on the Kharsawan side of the River Nansakar, where the rugged mountains gave way to forested hills, and the wizard’s secret courier lived as a humble barge master. However, before Ashok could find this man and force him to reveal the location of the Lost House, he had to deal with the matter of their new recruits.

Their advance rider had spotted nearly a hundred people waiting along the road south. Ashok had crept forward to observe. They were in a clearing in the middle of nowhere. From the hasty condition of their camp, they had not been there for long. Since they were obviously armed, his first assumption was that they were warriors sent by the Inquisition to find his criminal band, only they were flying no heraldry. They could be warriors from a neighboring house on their way to raid Haradas, except they were making no attempt to conceal their presence, and there were too few horses. There were a couple heavily loaded wagons, but fully half of their number had to be on foot. It was too deserted a stretch of road to support such a large number of bandits. The only thing that frequently traveled through here was shipments of lumber toward Neeramphorn and there were far easier things to steal than logs.

Ashok had temporarily called upon the Heart to improve his vision, and had been confused to see the warriors were wearing the colors of three different houses. Most of their number were dressed like workers, and there were even a few in casteless rags. There was a surprising number of women and children among them. It was odd to see people of such disparate status thrown together without an obvious reason. He thought they might be refugees from some conflict he was unaware of, but they looked relatively clean, fed, and as far as he could tell, happy, so that made no sense.

He’d returned and told the others about the strange group. Going around would have required a significant detour, and time was of the essence. It didn’t feel like a trap, and if it was, it wasn’t a very good one. So he had admonished the Somsak to ready their crossbows, but to keep them down unless ordered, and then they had continued along the road.

The Sons were spotted and an obvious ripple of excitement went through the crowd. People rushed about, alerting each other, and they began to prepare, not for battle, but more like they were going to watch a parade. Two of the group broke away from the camp and approached the road. One was a warrior, wearing the insignia of Kharsawan, the other was a female worker in a long black coat. Both raised their hands in greeting.

“Hello, Sons of the Black Sword,” called the woman. “We’ve been waiting for you.”

Curious. Ashok raised his hand and everyone brought their horses to a stop. They were spread out enough it would be hard to take them all in one volley, and if anyone tried he would turn his Somsak loose.

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