They rode east towards the mountains as the night sky began to grey with the coming dawn. Stoutbelly rode behind Jed, and he helped navigate the rangers to the site of the massacre. There was hardly a need for direction; the black smoke in the morning sky would have been indicator enough. Black smoke means the fire was still alive, while white smoke would have meant it had died, and what was left would just be ash and char. This one was still smoldering and black.
They came over a small hill and saw a blackened campsite next to a small stream. It would have been a nice place to camp if it weren’t for the burned bodies. Burned wagons, tents, animal skins, boxes, tools, everything they saw was destroyed.
There were no survivors visible, but Dusty knew they were near. Stoutbelly slid off the back of Jed’s horse and walked a few steps away. He cupped his hands to his mouth and gave a series of whistles that sounded exactly like the bird call of a sandgrouse: <Kattar-kattar!>
As if from nowhere, eighteen halflings appeared before them. If the rangers had not been looking directly at them they never would have seen their hiding spots in the little defilades of the earth or camouflaged with prairie grass. They were mostly women, with some older men and young children. Many of them were smudged with soot where they had been trying to retrieve the dead bodies of their kinsmen. One little girl being held in the arms of a fat halfling woman with wild hair had a face darkened with ash and streaked from tears.
“Blimey,” Jed muttered and looked away. The older rangers were more hardened to the sights of bloodshed. They were concerned, but not shocked. Dusty’s face was red with rage. The sight of so many dead kin ignited his anger like a dwarven furnace.
The rangers dismounted. Dusty had the Ingotson brothers and Jed help the halflings finish retrieving the remains of their dead before starting a burial detail. Meanwhile, he had Sige, Cletus, and himself investigating the area for tracks and signs. They walked in wide circles around the burned campsite, occasionally kneeling to examine a divot in the earth or touch a spot of grass.
“Here!” Sige called out. He was kneeling by a patch of grass and dirt on the opposite side of the camp from where they arrived. Dusty and Cletus hurried over and bent down next to him. Sige pointed out the area. “Here and here, Lieutenant,” he said.
Dusty examined the tracks. He saw hoofprints like before, but this time he also saw footprints made from a humanoid wearing … “Boots!” Dusty exclaimed. “ Looks like the same shape and size that we saw earlier. Whoever attacked this place was wearing the same boots and riding the same horses.”
It went unspoken between them, the scout, the elf, and the officer. As the halfling elder had said, gnolls don’t wear boots. At most, they’ll wrap their feet and ankles with rags as some sort of makeshift support, but they were too savage to be able to craft anything like footwear. The halfling clan leader said that it was gnolls that attacked, and it was certainly standard gnoll tactics to hack and burn, but the tracks they found were of booted riders. Dusty was certain they had not missed any other tracks indicating the warband had headed off in a different direction. All the evidence seemed to indicate that a group of gnolls ran around a hill and then started wearing boots and riding horses.
“It don’t make sense,” Cletus said, once again picking at a tusk.
Sige was thoughtful. “Does anyone in our troop have the ability to detect magic?” he asked.
Cletus spit at that. Magic was a foul word in most of Sumadea. It was a feeling leftover from the previous war they had with their northern neighbor, Valorion. Valorion was driven by industry. It had big cities filled with mages, guilds, and temples, while Sumadea was agrarian and rural. The Valorians had invaded their neighbor wielding their magic with arrogance to devastating effect. After several bloody years, the open aggression had ended with Sumadea becoming a vassal state of Valorion, but the Sumadeans had not forgotten the cunning brutality of the war mages, warlocks, and sorcerers to the north. Some in Sumadea had studied the magical arts, but few practiced it openly.
“Few of us out here have sold our souls to learn magic,” Dusty replied. But Sige had a point. Magic was an answer that mostly solved the riddle’s clues as to what happened. “You thinking the gnolls transformed?” Dusty asked.
Sige paused to gather his thoughts, then replied, “I do not think it is gnolls at all. I think it is something else to make us think it was gnolls. Several spells might disguise someone, but to disguise a group of people is a more advanced skill.”
Cletus was wincing at every mention of spells or magic.
“You thinking the twelve gnolls were all some other race, disguised by magic? They’d have to account for the running speed of a gnoll too. I’ve heard of some spells that can make you faster for a time,” Dusty pondered.
Cletus groaned behind them. They ignored him. Sige nodded. “Yes. I think that is what best fits the facts right now. But that means there are …”
“Multiple magic users,” Dusty finished. “Yeah. And it would account for the lack of eaten bodies. Gnolls have been known to kidnap children, usually for snacks on the go. But we haven’t seen any remains until now.”
Dusty was feeling anxious to go. They had burned an hour while resting and had spent at least another traveling and investigating the burned-out campsite. They were already losing ground in the pursuit, and if the gnolls or whatever they were had fresh mounts, then they would be able to outride the rangers with ease and the kids wouldn’t have a chance.
By this time the bodies had been neatly arranged at the base of a hill. Dusty told Stoutbelly that they had to go, but vowed they would return this way with either their missing child … or to help bury the dead. The chieftain nodded. Some of the halflings wanted to go too, but they had no means to travel now. Stoutbelly turned and joined his people in finishing the sad task of burying their dead.
At the lieutenant’s command, the rangers put a foot in their stirrups and remounted their horses. “We have a job to finish,” Dusty told them. He turned Amigo towards the direction the booted riders had taken, and they took off at a fast trot.
They pushed hard to make up for lost time. They had spent three hours in a detour. It was all but hopeless that they would catch up in time. But there was nothing for it; they wouldn’t be rangers if they didn’t do what they needed to for those scratching a life on the frontier of Sumadea. Children’s lives were at stake.
Cletus led the way through the foothills, leading them to the mountains, following any of the tracks left by those they pursued. It was still morning, but the sun was climbing, taunting them with the march of time.
An arrow flew past Dusty from his left, just before they heard a shout. He turned and saw a group of riders cresting the hill the rangers had been skirting around. The new riders were mostly men, some with an unholy percentage of orcish blood, wearing hide and leather armor underneath long dusters. They spurred their horses towards the rangers while the rangers turned their column and prepared to counterattack.
Dusty could see the lead rider now. He was a big half-orc wearing a hat with the brim pinned up in the front and a necklace strung with fangs and tusks. He was riding straight for Dusty and had a hand crossbow already leveled at him.
“Great,” Dusty said. “Bandits.”
This is part one of “Hell’s Warband.” Click here to read the next part. If you like these free stories, please subscribe. If you REALLY liked them, please consider leaving me a tip by purchasing it on Kindle for .99 (the cost for 1/3 of a cup of coffee).
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