The Alchemy of Treason (The Lost Book 5) by Peter Nealen

Author:Peter Nealen [Nealen, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: WarGate Books
Published: 2022-09-30T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 18

With the number of target sets and their widely dispersed locations, we wouldn’t be able to do this as a platoon. We had to split up into teams.

The Tuacha, somewhat to my surprise, didn’t take a target to themselves, but split up to accompany our teams. There were only five of them, and four teams, including the Menninkai, so it ended up a little lopsided. Fennean went with Orava’s team, Diarmodh with Gurke and Gunny, while Eoghain went with Bailey and Mathghaman and Bearrac came with us. I’d known we’d miss Conall, but he was still back at Cor Wudrun, trying to help the people there against the sorcerous plague.

We rode out from Cor Legear in the early hours of the morning, before the sun was up. Fortunately, it was getting late enough in the year that we didn’t need to sacrifice too much sleep, though as Recon Marines, that almost seemed wrong. Lack of sleep was almost a vital part of who and what we were.

Bailey, Gunny, and I shook hands in farewell. “Make sure you get comms checks at least once a day.” Gunny wasn’t going to micromanage over the radio—that wasn’t his way—but it was an old truism of Recon that if you can’t get comms, you’re useless and you may as well extract. We had to be able to coordinate and get word back if this was going to be anything but a long ride. And if we did find Tharain, then the faster we could get word back and get the full force of the Galel armies moving, the better.

Gurke had heard and nodded and waved. He wasn’t being a jerk, avoiding our little circle. He was just having trouble with his horse. The buckskin with a dark mane didn’t seem to like him very much, and didn’t want to stay in one place. He’d swapped out his old mount, which had been going partially lame by the time we returned to Cor Legear, but his new one wasn’t much of an improvement.

After short farewells, we turned our horses’ noses toward our targets and rode out into the predawn dimness.

* * *

As settled and civilized as it was, the kingdom of Cor Legear still had plenty of relatively wild parts, and we had to ride carefully through them, weapons at the ready and eyes out. Especially since the kingdom was now effectively in a state of civil war. The bandits who had been ravaging the land at the behest of the Empire of Ar-Annator were now the least of our worries, but they could cause a whole lot of trouble nevertheless, especially if we let our guard down.

So, we mostly rode in the dark or the woods, avoiding the roads and farms as we went. Not everyone was in open rebellion, but it paid not to take chances.

Unfortunately, in keeping with Recon’s bailiwick of going into the hardest, nastiest terrain where no one else in their right mind wants to go, we added an extra two days to our movement toward our objective.

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