Jispin, Eut, and Sil pondered what to do. The third picket guard didn’t have a horse as they’d expected. They needed to move in three different directions fast, though, and very far, too. Continue reading Thune Runner X
Monthly Archives: October 2017
Thune Runner IX
“How accurate do you think he is?”
“Ah, that is the hundred gold crown question…. Jispin! Come here, boy!” Continue reading Thune Runner IX
Thune Runner VIII
“I am the only one for a hundred leagues. But that way,” he pointed, “are a thousand Thune raiders, and another thousand families. They know you are coming. They have roasting pits ready for you.” His words fell across the silent Argentain straining to listed to them, or any orders that were issued, and raised an audible intake of breath. They’d been marching a long way following the hundred Thune who’d captured Jispin. “And I’ve been here for hours, but your scouts are blind and poorly trained.” Continue reading Thune Runner VIII
Thune Runner VII
Once he was over a hill and out of sight of the encampment, he headed south. He still moved cautiously and stuck to shadows, padding silently along, senses bare to the raw elements, anticipating the Thune pickets posted at intervals around the camp. As expected, he smelled the horse before he saw the man, sitting with his back toward the camp and eyes outward looking for intruders rather than escapees. There wasn’t any obvious way past the picket. Jispin didn’t want to leave easily-followed hoof tracks, so he left nothing but the Thune’s body and an unteathered pony. Continue reading Thune Runner VII
Thune Runner VI
The Thune lashed at them with a whip and ordered them more loudly, in heavily accented and hardly understandable Crimean. It wasn’t clear if the old couple spoke that language or not. Jispin eyed the huddled mass of humanity and gritted his teeth, then stood. He motioned to a large man nearby, one from a string that had come in with him, to help him with the bodies. The Thune yelled even more inarticulately and shook his whip at all four of them. With a shrug, few words, and a brief bit of pantomime, Jispin communicated the older pair didn’t have the strength, and that he and his friend would bury the dead if they were given a shovel, so the dogs wouldn’t eat them. Continue reading Thune Runner VI
Thune Runner V
The Thune were dragging the third man to death when one on Jispin’s string, an older man whom had started the morning with a barely perceptible limp which had gotten steadily worse, was slowing down. It was causing a struggle by others in the string trying to help him along. He was the patriarch of a family, he guessed, with family on his slave-string. He’d also get them all killed if they didn’t cut him off soon. They were not able to get ahead to gain time to drink at streams. No water would mean certain death on a run of this distance. He guided the string near one of the guards riding nearest. Continue reading Thune Runner V
Thune Runner IV
Four of the line drew back their strong recurve bows of horn and wood.On command they fired as one. Jispin ducked, flattening himself on the ground, then bouncing back up, once again armed with two swords and a challenge on his face. “Kurgen are better than any Thune! You disgrace your parents, if they even know who you are!” Continue reading Thune Runner IV
Thune Runner III
He made it to the rock without incident, and settled in on the side away from the river, finding a small hollow that blocked the wind. He munched silently on food pilfered from the horse’s saddlebags, pulled a sheepskin from his too-small pack and wrapped it around to ward off the cold, curled into as small a ball as his growing frame could manage, and slept. Continue reading Thune Runner III
Thune Runner II
“Haggen! Did you kill the runner?” Jispin understood enough of the Thune tongue to get the gist of the question. He grunted back a nondescript reply as he nocked an arrow and headed back for the embankment, giving his new weapon a few quick test draws. A good weapon. The arrows were straight and well-made, as expected of a race of horse-archers. Continue reading Thune Runner II
Thune Runner I
The village in the burned-out valley was a total waste. Smoke still rose from smoldering heaps of damp wooden wreckage and sodden thatch. Jispin skulked from corner to heap, like a silent shadow in the dim light blown on a desultory wind. Bodies lay unburied but obviously looted, and often just as obviously raped and tortured to death… and sometimes apparently tortured to death, then raped. Some pillagers were not very particular. Continue reading Thune Runner I