The Hidden Fire (Book 2) by James R. Sanford Page A

the
shoulder for his trouble.  They each took a few steps back.  Aiyan sheathed his
sword and placed his hands on his hips, staring at the two older men.
    The
skinny man’s mouth fell open.  “Good Goddess.  Don’t you recognize him,
Colonel?  He’s one of the boys from the old company.  What was it we used to
call him?”
    The
colonel squinted at Aiyan for a long moment, his lips parting in an excuse for
a grin.  He nodded to himself.  “It’s Candy.  I’d know him anywhere.”
    Aiyan
held still, expressionless.  “Thurlun . . . and Pacey.”
    Thurlun
turned to the others.  “Put your weapons away, boys.”
    The
one with the cut shoulder only raised his machete higher.  “But he killed Marto!”
    “Of
course he did,” Thurlun said cheerfully, “he’s a killer.  The best killer I’ve
ever seen.  Could have killed you if he had wanted to.  The night he got his
nickname he gutted two enemy officers just to get their peppermint sticks.”  He
almost smacked his lips.  “Damn but I’m glad to see you, Candy.”
    Aiyan
returned the smile with only a little insolence.  “So we’re not your
prisoners?”  He nodded at the horse pistols still leveled at him.
    “Well,”
said Thurlun, “I’ll have to disarm you until I hear your story.  But what I
really want is for you to come and work for me again — seems we have an opening. 
And by the way, the vine that the girl has hold of is starting to slip, so if you
want her without punctures you’d best unbuckle that sword belt.”
     

CHAPTER 8:  Killers
     
    Thurlun’s
men each carried a short length of rope with a knotted end, tucked in their
sashes.  They used these to bind the three of them, tying their hands behind their
backs.  When one of them searched Lerica for hidden weapons he let his hands
stray, and she kicked him in the knee.
    “You
bitch,” he cried, reaching back to slap her.
    “Serves
you right,” said Thurlun, leveling one pistol at the man.  He froze in mid-swing.
    “Don’t
forget you swore an oath along with me and everyone else,” continued Thurlun. 
“No drunkenness or messing with any woman, slave or free, till this job is
done.”  He held up the pistol.  “I will enforce this by simple means.”
    They
marched single file to a camp by the river.  Thurlun carried Aiyan’s sword. 
Twice they left the trail to go around a trap, and each time Kyric spied a
folded palm leaf with a twig thrust through it.
    They
have to mark them, he thought.  There’s so many traps out here that they can’t
remember them all.
    The
camp was far more than a camp.  It was a makeshift fishing factory.  A wide
strip of ground had been cleared of underbrush, and a dozen men worked at the
riverbank, most of them hauling in a long heavy net while two others manned a
small dingy, spreading a second net across the river.  Several teams of three
men each picked the catch off the net with large hooks at the end of eight-foot
poles.  The nets were strung loosely with wide openings, and they held few small
fish, the catch being mostly rays along with some lakka.  All the men were
Terrulans, and all of them were naked save for native loincloths.  Then Kyric
noticed that each one had been fitted with a set of leg irons.
    They
had a ray off the net, and it was hauled up the bank to a row of rough-cut
tables where teams of men and women waited with little handsaws and some other
tools.  Unlike the prisoners at the river, they all wore leather aprons that
stretched from the neck to the knees, but like them, they too were shackled at
the ankles.
    Thurlun
led them past this, past a tree where a guard sat on a platform in the treetop,
a musket across his knee, and past a lagoon that came in from a small lake to
the north, narrowing the high ground to a strip about half a furlong wide between
the lake and the river.  Several small islands rested in the lagoon, one only
about thirty feet out.  Kyric saw a couple of women on this