Page 298 of Historical Hotties
CHAPTER NINETEEN
By the timeThor and his men arrived at Millford, most of the village was nearly ash.
The first thing they saw, other than huddled and frightened villagers, was men on horseback riding up and down the burning roads and alleyways. There were two main roads in Millford and a variety of small pathways and alleys, most of which seemed to be full of smoke and fire.
“The raiders are still here,” he said to the knights around him. “But I do not understand why.”
Next to him, Darius’ helmed head turned in his direction. “What do you mean?”
Thor pointed to a gang of raiders in the distance. “If they looted what they could and then burned the remainder, why are they still here?” he said. “They should have left long ago. Opportunists do not usually linger over their plunder.”
“They do if they want to collect that which has not been burned,” Darius said, keeping a tight rein on his excitable warhorse. “They are looking for anything of value in the ashes.”
That made sense, and it didn’t sit well with Thor. “Scavengers,” he said with disgust. “Bully, you and True take half the men to the south side of the village. Your task will beto capture a couple of the men so we can interrogate them and find out who sent them. Darius and I will remain here with the rest of the men and flush them in your direction. Go around the village and not through it or you may drive them out before we can capture one of them.”
Clayne and Truett took off, pulling about a hundred men with them as they went. They gave the village a wide berth by heading off toward the southeast, sweeping around the village as they headed for the southern side of the village. Thor and Darius gave them several minutes, during which a few of the soldiers questioned the displaced villagers as to who the raiders were. No one seemed to know. But the interviews were cut short when Thor gave the command to move into the village and chase any lingering raiders toward Clayne and Truett.
Thor and Darius split up once they entered the village. Thor took a group of men down the main road, forcing out some of the outlaws who were still lingering in the heart of the village. Most of them scattered, but a couple of them were cornered by Thor’s men. They grabbed the raiders and began beating them as Thor moved forward, chasing men from their hiding places in burned-out cottages, forcing them south. But a few broke away and took off toward the east, sending Thor after them.
It was a senseless chase.
Thor pursued the men for a short time until he realized there was no logic to what they were doing. They weren’t trying to flee. They were simply going up one alleyway and then down another. They weren’t engaging the Stafford men for a fight and they weren’t trying to run away from them. They were simply going in circles. The fires were smaller now, as the main street of the village had mostly burned, so there was heavy smoke in the air, muddling the senses of smell and sight.
But Thor didn’t need to see these men to outsmart them.
He and his soldiers stopped chasing the particular group they’d been pursuing. Instead, they doubled back on their tracks because from the pattern of the fleeing men, they would be coming by them once again, and perhaps they could capture some of them, enough to find out who they were and where they had come from. Thor was disappointed because he hadn’t even had the opportunity to fight one of them, a most undistinguished situation forEl Martillo. He’d fought plenty of men in tighter quarters than this, but as he had observed, these men didn’t want to fight.
They simply wanted to be chased.
It went on into the night. Eventually, Thor and more than half the men he’d brought with him had managed to clear out the alleys and cottages of any remaining raiders, driving them toward Clayne and Truett. In fact, the two knights had managed to capture about ten men, all of them being sequestered by Stafford soldiers, and although they hadn’t interrogated them yet, they didn’t need to. One of the Stafford soldiers recognized a former friend who had gone to serve Lord Dordon a few years earlier and that bit of information made it back to Clayne and Truett, who immediately relayed it to Thor.
As Caledonia had feared, her uncle and cousin were to blame after all.
Near midnight, all of the raiders had either run off or been captured. They had a total of thirty-three prisoners at this point, but no Rotri or Domnall de Wylde. All prisoners were being held near the southern end of town, just off the main road, where a gang of Stafford soldiers were guarding them. With the town now silent and the fires having finally died off, Thor gathered his knights for a conclave.
“It is time for answers,” he said grimly. “This is the most disorganized, bizarre raid I have ever seen.”
Darius, Clayne, and Truett heartily concurred. “They would not engage,” Darius said. “Every time we would come close, they would run off like skittish children.”
Everyone was nodding. “And in circles, no less,” Truett said. “They ran around in circles, groups of them. I nearly collided with Bully at one point when our groups crossed paths.”
Thor turned toward the village in smoldering ruins. “Did anyone notice that the raiders were carrying anything of value?” he said. “Did they even pillage, or did Dordon send them over here simply to burn?”
The knights shrugged, shaking heads, looking off at the village also. “I think they had some things of value that they were carrying,” Truett said. “I thought I saw one of them with a sack of goods in his hands. Not even strapped to his saddle.”
“I have a few men on foot patrolling the outskirts of the village,” Darius said. “In case there are more men hiding. Their orders are to flush them out.”
Thor’s gaze lingered on the village before he returned his focus to his men. “Something doesn’t feel right,” he said quietly as he pointed toward the prisoners. “I do not care how you get the information out of them, but get it. Find out what their purpose was.”
“You should do it, Thor,” Darius said. “Blackchurch taught you how to interrogate a man the proper way. You should be the one to pull fingernails or break teeth.”
That wasn’t exactly what he did, but the gist of the statement was true. Thor had been taught interrogation methods that would make grown men squeamish. He’d had more than one occasion to use them, especially as a mercenary. With a shrug, he nodded his head.
“Then bring me one of the prisoners,” he said. “I will show you how to do it right, you silly children.”
There were grins all around because any one of those men could have interrogated a prisoner and done it quite ably. Perhaps with different methods than Thor would use, but ably nonetheless. Truett and Clayne were turning to collect a prisoner when one of the Stafford soldiers suddenly rushed up out of the darkness.
“My lords,” the man, sweating profusely, said quickly. “You must come.”
