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Episode
I The Corsair
Melissa watched the convoy of ten wagons and
its escort move slowly down the canyon toward
her. She raised her hand, signaling
the other members of the raiding party to get
ready. She wanted no
mistakes. On the other side of
the canyon she could see Chance Brown move cautiously into
position.
Raising her head slightly she did a quick
count of the escort. She estimated
that there were about a hundred guards.
That was a good sign. It
meant the load of silver the wagons was carrying was
substantial. She had been planning
this raid for months, ever since she learned that the silver mines of the
For a year the
Peregrine had ranged the coasts of Dakmora waging a relentless
war against the Duke’s own merchant
fleet. Melissa had been careful
to avoid attacking ships that were owned by the ordinary citizens of the
duchy, a pattern that did not go
unnoticed. Eventually the Duke
found that no seaman would sail on his
vessels. Melissa’s targets
had become few and far between and she had been forced to consider a more
difficult objective. The Duke’s
silver mines, deep in the mountainous interior of Dakmora had been the obvious
choice.
The choice had been obvious to the Duke as
well. The road to the mines was
heavily patrolled and he had increased the number of guard towers along the
coast, hoping to prevent or deter a landing by just such a raiding party
as Melissa now led. But Melissa
had planned well. She had waited
until the fogs of winter had descended upon the coast and using these as
a screen for her activities had landed over fifty men in a secluded
cove.
It was a small enough force to go against
the number of troops the Duke could throw into the field, but Melissa did
not intend to fight her way to the
mountains. Instead she enlisted
the aid of the Duke’s own citizens.
Duke Roland’s harsh rule had turned many of his own subjects
against him. The mountain people,
poor to begin with, felt especially
oppressed. It had not been difficult
to find a man willing to guide them by way of back roads around the Duke’s
garrisons. Now they were poised
to strike. Fifty chosen men against
the more than one hundred soldiers guarding the silver
wagons.
But Melissa had the element of surprise and
commanded the high ground. She
intended to use both to her advantage.
She had no illusions about the quality of the men who served
her. In open battle against the
Duke’s men, most of them would turn and
run. But they were quite capable
of fighting well from ambush.
Provided the Duke’s men did not come too close, they could be
depended upon to do their part.
There were certain key figures in her party
that she was counting on. The
two lissome Silvani rangers were critical to the success of her plan, as
was Chance Brown and Che Sha. She
could count on these four to stand firm in the face of an attack, thus setting
an example for the rest of the men.
She hoped, however, that the surprise of her attack would so demoralize
Duke Roland’s guards that they would offer little
resistance. One thing she did
not want to have to do was to count on the band of ruffians she had assembled
in close combat with the Duke’s trained soldiers.
Now it was
time. Melissa raised her arm
and then brought it down sharply.
With a grinding crash the massive tree that Melissa’s men had
already cut through toppled into the canyon, cutting off the forward progress
of the wagon train. Immediately
pandemonium reigned as the Duke’s soldiers ran toward the
barrier. Melissa jumped forward,
her long red hair streaming behind her.
“Throw down your weapons,” she
shouted. “You are trapped
and surrounded.”
In spite of her desire for vengeance, Melissa
could not bring herself to slaughter men who had done her no
harm. Her raiding party controlled
the high ground. Even outnumbered
they had a decided advantage. At
that moment there was a second crash, and from behind the trapped wagon train
a second tree smashed into the canyon.
Now there was no way back as
well. Melissa shouted again,
deliberately exposing herself to the crossbow bolts of the confused escort
below. “I am the Red
Dragon. You have all heard of
me. I strike at Duke Roland with
impunity. Surrender now or
die!”
Below her the officer in charge of the escort
shouted orders, attempting to achieve some sort of
order. But as yet, not a single
man had made any effort to scale the canyon wall or attempt to remove the
massive tree blocking the road.
Finally he screamed out an order that the men responded to, “Shoot
her! Cut her
down!”
It was no more than what Melissa had
expected. Without taking her
eyes from the men below, she signaled Shasara and
Vayasha. The twin sound of the
two girls’ bowstrings sounded above the uproar from the trapped
men. The officer stopped shouting,
his words cut off in mid sentence, as two arrows penetrated his
neck. The snap of crossbows being
fired sounded in return, but Melissa did not
move. Instead with the same
incredible speed that she had shown in Vandar’s brothel, she picked
the incoming crossbow bolts out of the
air.
“This is your last chance to save
yourself,” shouted Melissa, contemptuously tossing the bolts back in
the direct from which they had come.
“Surrender now or you will all
die.”
Bereft of their officer, menaced by invisible
archers, and faced by a seemingly supernatural foe, many of the escort threw
down their weapons. Others ran
both in the direction from which they had come and the direction in which
they had been going. But no one
escaped. As they pushed through
the branches of the two trees that had been toppled into the canyon, Che
Sha and Brown led the rest of Melissa’s party in an attack that cut
them off.
There were twenty five men in each
group. Most of them lined the
top of the canyon and hurled rocks and fired crossbow bolts upon the panicked
soldiers. The few that made it
past the fallen trees ran into Che Sha and a few hand-picked men at one end
and Brown and few of the more trusted
pirates. Seeing that there was
no escape, and believing themselves set upon by a vastly superior force,
the remaining members of the escort threw down their arms and
surrendered. With no losses and
a minimum of bloodshed, Melissa had
triumphed. She scrambled down
the slope to help her companions.
As she did so Che Sha and Brown moved forward
and collected the weapons that had been tossed
aside. Other members of the raiding
party herded the stunned and demoralized soldiers into a group, where they
could be more easily watched. As
Melissa landed at the bottom of the canyon she shouted toward the
top. “Keep them covered
while we secure them. Kill anyone
who tries to escape.”
From the top of the canyon several voices
answered, “Aye aye, captain.
It was the final part of Melissa’s
deception. Besides Shasara and
Vayasha, there were only a handful of men left on top of the
canyon. But the soldiers they
had taken prisoner would be fooled into thinking that a sizable party remained
above, ready to rain arrows upon them if they attempted to
escape.
It took only minutes to secure the members
of the captured escort. Melissa
had them bound hand and foot and left along the side of the
road. In time they would work
themselves free, but by then she planned to be long
gone. And in any case, without
weapons or supplies there was little that any of the soldiers could do other
than return to their barracks with the sad news of their
defeat. Most likely, many of
the men would desert rather than bring the Duke news of the loss of his
treasure. If so that was all
for the good. It would give Melissa
even more time to return to her ship.
Nevertheless, she wasted little
time. As soon as all was in order
the tree blocking the forward progress of the wagon train was dragged out
of the way and the horses urged down the mountain
road. Melissa’s raiding
party rode in the wagons. It
was extra weight for the horses to pull, but Melissa did not intend to use
the wagons any longer than necessary.
An hour down the road, the wagons were halted
next to a side canyon. There
the cargo of silver bars was transferred to a hundred mules that she had
hidden there. With fifty men
working on the reloading of the cargo they were finished in short
order. Then the wagons were ordered
to proceed. A few leagues further
on was an old disused road once used by mountain traders and
smugglers. The wagons would be
driven down the road to an old bridge that crossed a deep
canyon. There the horses would
be unhitched and driven into the woods.
The wagons would then be pushed into the
canyon. With any luck, anyone
trying to follow them would spend a good deal of time on a wild goose
chase. Ten of the horses would
be used by the men driving the wagons to make good their
escape.
It was a complex plan, but one that Melissa had spent a great deal of time on. She wanted to ensure that as little blood was spilled as possible, and that all of her men escaped. And, more to the point, she wanted to deliver a message to Duke Roland. She would have shown him that no part of his realm was safe from the Red Dragon. As Melissa led the rest of her men and the mule train of silver into the mountains, she allowed herself a smile. Things finally seemed to be going her way.
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