Free Get Her Back (Demontech) by David Sherman Page A

they knew, Balta sent Sergeant Korona with three men to walk the circumference of the nomad camp, in search of where the Golden Girl and the Zobran Royal Lancers were being held.
     
          “We have traveling companions,” Maros said.
          “Did you think the nomads would let us wander around without keeping a close watch on us?” Sergeant Korona asked.
          “I guess not.”
          “I’m not going to look. How many and where are they?”
          They were walking clockwise around the camp and had gone just far enough around the curve of the circular camp to be out of sight of their own small encampment area. Maros was a few yards to Korona’s rear and a bit to his left, his peripheral vision allowed him to see farther to the right rear of the small reconnaissance team than Korona could.
          “I can see four. They’re about twenty-five yards back.”
          “There could be more than four?”
          “There could, yes.”
          “Are they showing weapons?”
          “They’ve got those big spears in their hands. Carrying them like walking sticks.” Maros turned his head to look into the space  between two huts that they were just passing, which allowed his peripheral vision to see farther to his left rear. “There are five of them,” he reported. “The one on the outside, the one I couldn’t see before, has his bow in his hands and an arrow nocked. The bow’s not drawn,” he hastily added.
          “Let me know if anything changes,” Korona said. “Do you see  anything, Teto? Kocsi?” Neither of the other men had seen their  followers, or anything else of interest.
          So it went for another hundred yards before half a dozen nomad warriors stepped out from between two huts a few yards to their front. Half of them had their spears held ready to lunge, the others had drawn swords. Itzuli, the translator, was with them.
          “What are you doing here?” Itzuli demanded.
          Korona spread his hands, showing that he wasn’t holding a weapon, and said in mock surprise, “We’re just taking a walk, stretching our legs after the long horseback ride from the ocean to here.”
          “I know you,” Itzuli said to Korona in a fiercer tone than he had used when he was translating for Nagusi. “You are a leader among these outlanders. You are not just walking—you are spying!”
          “Spying! That’s not true, we aren’t spying. What could we hope to find by walking in the open during the day? Spies skulk about in the dark, and keep to shadows. Why, if anybody was saying something you don’t want us to hear, they’d see us coming and stop talking. Or hide away anything they didn’t want us to see.” He turned his head to the side and spat. “Spying! That’s nonsense.” He snorted. “Do you really think we can understand your tongue?”
          Itzuli stared at Korona for a long moment, breathing hard,  obviously thinking. Finally his arm shot out, pointing back the way the Bloody Axes had come from.
          “Go. Return to your place until you are summoned. Do not leave it before then under pain of death!”
          “If that’s the way you feel about it,” Korona said, in a tone that implied that the interrupted walk was of no importance. He gave a brief bow that was barely more than a nod, and turned about. To see the five nomad warriors Maros had reported a short time earlier. The five were grinning at him and his men. They caressed their weapons as though they were anxious to use them.
          Korona just looked at them without making a move toward his own axe.
          Itzuli barked something in the harsh language of the High Desert Nomads, and the five, still grinning, stepped aside to allow the four Skraglanders to pass.
     
          “I don’t know if it’s the Zobrans or the musician—or something else,” Korona reported when the recon team returned,