Forest Kingdom Trilogy 3 - Down Among the Dead Men

The man might be a cold bastard, but he’d undoubtedly saved Jack’s life, and Scarecrow Jack always paid his debts. He scowled briefly. It was his own damned fault for getting caught off guard in the first place. A simple little hole-in-the-ground trap, disguised and baited, and he fell for it. Literally. If Hammer hadn’t come along at just the right time, the guards would have had him for sure, and Scarecrow Jack’s head would have stood on a pike in the nearest market square as a warning to others.
    Jack ran on through the night, brushing noiselessly past the hanging branches of the close-set trees. Too many of them were dead and rotten, a legacy of the Darkwood. Jack felt their presence like an ache in his soul, a barely cauterized wound in the Forest. Normally he would have stopped and checked each one for signs of life or regrowth, but tonight he didn’t have the time. A flickering light appeared in the darkness ahead, and he slowed to a walk. He moved silently forward and crouched motionless in the shadows at the edge of a clearing. Jack watched Hammer striding impatiently up and down beside a blazing camp fire, and tried to figure out how he was going to make Hammer understand about the fort.
    Jonathon Hammer was a tall, muscular man with impressively broad shoulders. He was in his late thirties and looked it. He wore his dark hair short, brushed forward to hide a receding hairline. His eyes were deceptively warm, as was his smile, but for all his efforts there was a cold, vindictive quality to his face that never left it. He wore a simple leather vest over a white cotton shirt, and plain black trousers stuffed into the tops of his muddy boots. By his dress he could have been anything from a trader to a clerk to a bailiff, but the long sword hanging diagonally down his back marked him for the warrior he was. Hammer was a good six and a half feet tall, but the hilt of the sword stood up beside his head, while the tip of the scabbard was almost long enough to brush the ground behind him. It was the longest sword Jack had ever seen, and from the width of the scabbard it looked like a heavy sword as well, but Hammer moved easily with it on his back, as though unaware of its presence. He also carried another sword on his hip, but though he occasionally took that off, Jack had never seen him remove the longsword from his back. He even slept with it on.
    In his time, Hammer had apparently been most kinds of soldier. He’d served as a mercenary for hire, a baron’s man-at-arms, and as one of the king’s guards, but he’d always been too ambitious and greedy for his own good. Wherever he went, sooner or later he’d start a still, or a crooked gambling school, or fight an officer he didn’t like, and then he would be off on his travels again. It was on one of these that he’d found the longsword, but that was one part of his life he never talked about.
    Most recently he’d been part of a company of guards escorting a wagon load of gold to the border fort. He’d never seen so much gold in one place before, and it had filled his dreams ever since. With that much gold he could raise his own army of mercenaries and take the Forest Kingdom by storm. King Jonathon the First … Jack smiled. Hammer never had believed in thinking small. He’d stayed with the guards just long enough to see the gold safely delivered and stored, and then he deserted and took to the Forest, lying low while he plotted some way to take the gold for himself. But that night something had happened in the fort.
    Hammer had stood at the edge of the clearing, listening to the screams, but hadn’t dared investigate alone. He watched the fort for the next few days, but there were no signs of life. It took him awhile to track down the archer called Wilde, and acquire the services of Scarecrow Jack, but he apparently regarded it as time well spent. With those two at his side, he’d been ready to face anything the fort could throw at him.
    Unfortunately, the Rangers got there first.
    Jack crouched in the shadows at the edge of the outlaws’ clearing, and studied Hammer and Wilde with narrowed eyes. Delay was dangerous; the later he was, the more Hammer would make him suffer for it. And yet still Jack hesitated. He needed time to think about the two men he’d become allied with. Hammer was one thing. He owed Hammer. But Wilde …
    Edmond Wilde was sitting on the other side of the fire, hungrily gnawing a greasy chicken leg. He was tall and