Blood Ward

by Glynn Stewart

  “Right, right,” she said, shivering against him. “Just a lot of men with guns.”

  “Some of ’em are women,” Teer pointed out, which got him a strained chuckle.

  Then they were clear, riding up the bank and shaking out what water they could as they rode past the second batch of soldiers. The officer on this side sent them on their way with a wordless wave, and they rode on as if they were perfectly innocent.

  “I didn’t even know the Unity built roads,” Lora said a few minutes later as Kard drew abreast.

  “You heard her,” Kard replied. “The ford is used to support their forts—supplies are drawn from the depots at Carlon and shipped out by wagon. If the ford doesn’t hold up to the wagons, they need a new route or they need to fix the ford.”

  He shrugged.

  “Unity fixes what benefits Unity,” he concluded. “Roads between cities and steam-dragon lines and such. Rest of the country, well, hope someone near has pockets deep enough for the work.”

  The rest of the day passed quietly, the fall sun bright enough to make up for the chill in the wind. The time of the turning meant that rain was starting to get likelier, but the skies were clear enough that Teer hoped they could make it all the way north before getting drenched.

  “Do we have anywhere to camp with water?” he asked Kard as the sky started to get darker.

  “Map shows a spring that should be somewhere around here,” the other Hunter said, pulling the paper out again and looking around. “I’m guessing that way.” He pointed.

  “Let’s see what we find,” Teer agreed, urging Star back up to speed.

  He suspected Lora was already asleep or something close to it. Most of her weight was against his chest and she was breathing steadily—and she also hadn’t involved herself in the brief conversation.

  Another half-mile brought them close enough to the stream and the spring feeding it that Teer could pick out the sound.

  “This way,” he told Kard. “I hear water but no people.”

  “Sounds good. Let’s check it out.”

  They found the stream itself quickly, but it appeared to die out back into the soil in short order. Even so, the spring was clear and cold, and Teer nudged Lora gently.

  “Hey, Lora, we need to fill the canteens and get ready for supper,” he told her.

  She jerked awake, pulling away from him for a moment as she took in everything, then exhaled a long breath.

  “Sorry, what?” she asked.

  “I was asking if you could get down and fill the canteens at the spring,” he said gently. “Kard and I will settle and handle the horses if you can handle the water, and then we’ll all get the fire started.”

  “Yeah, I can do that,” she confirmed. She took a moment to assess her position on Star. “Can I get a hand down?”

  “Yeah,” Teer said with a chuckle, helping her off the horse before dismounting himself. “Many hands make small work. Let’s get to it.”

  Lora looked surprised as she dug into the stew Teer made for supper.

  “This is good,” she exclaimed. “How?”

  “Practice,” Teer told her. “I was a ranch hand for five turnings before I ever met Kard. I mostly worked with my ma’s mixes, but I picked up a thing or two.”

  “His ma sent us on our way with half a season’s worth of her mixes,” Kard said as he worked on his own food. “I miss them, but Teer is still a better cook than I.”

  “I think I might give you a run, but not over a campfire,” Lora admitted. “Used to a full kitchen.”

  “Ma didn’t share her actual kitchen with anyone,” Teer said. “She’s the cook for the whole ranch. Nobody works in her domain!”

  His companions chuckled.

  “She taught you somethin’, at least,” Lora said, before falling silent and staring at her bowl. “Thank you,” she finally said. “For dinner. And for…”

  “We do what needs,” Kard told her. “Get used to that phrase, if you’re to live among the Kota. ‘Do what needs, no more.’ Their shamans use it a lot.” He chuckled. “That’s where I learned it. Teer got it from me and a half-trained shaman we work with as a tracker sometimes.”

  “Thank you,” Lora repeated. “My da taught me to recognize hard work, and in some ways, I think your choice might be harder work than most I’ve seen.”

  “We’ll be fine,” Kard said with a chuckle. “Might make us look a bit incompetent, not catching you when we left the same day, but since no one else will be catching you…”

  Teer joined his boss in the chuckle.

  “No one can blame us for not doing what nobody does,” he agreed. “We’ll get you safe, Lora. And it won’t cost us.”

  She nodded and Kard rose and stretched.

  “I’m going to sleep,” he announced. “You two take care of the fire and sort out who has first watch between you, will you?”

  “Sure, Kard,” Teer agreed.

  The El-Spehari vanished into the night, though Teer still knew exactly where he was.

  “We’ll pull together the spare blankets for you,” Teer told Lora. “It won’t be as good as a proper bedroll, but it’s what we got.”

  Lora looked at him in surprise.

  “Whose bedroll did I have last night?” she asked.

  “Kard’s,” Teer told her. “His heart is softer than he pretends.”

  “How did you end up with him? With what he…is?”

  “That’s not a story I think is safe to tell,” he admitted. “But I follow where he leads now. He saved my life.”

  “Huh.” Lora stared into the fire for several minutes in silence. “I never knew my ma,” she finally said. “She died birthin’ me. Da was all I had.”

  “I’m sorry,” Teer said, reaching out to pat her shoulder gently. “My ma was all I had for a long time. Leaving home is hard, but some of us have no choice, do we?”

  “Stayin’ would cause him trouble,” Lora agreed sadly. “I’ll miss him.”

  “I miss my ma, but I know she’s safe,” Teer told her. “Your da is safe. No one was blaming him for anything when we left.”

  “Thank you,” she murmured. She looked up at him. “You said were a ranch boy. Wasn’t your da the rancher?”

  “Nah. Ma’s husband,” he corrected. “Da died in the Sunset Rebellion.” He stared into the darkness and shrugged. “Unity lost paperwork, stripped Ma of his pension. Hardin offered her a place at his ranch, and things took a course over a few turnings.”

  “I think my da thought he’d be betrayin’ me to wed again,” Lola said. “He ran an inn with workin’ girls who loved ’im. I doubt he slept alone ’cept by choice, but…he never wed. And it ain’t the same.”

  The two young Merik sat there staring at the fire for a long time.

  “I’ll take first watch,” Teer finally decided. “Let’s get those blankets together for you and get you wrapped up warm. It’s going to be cold overnight.”

  12

  The skies remained clear, but the wind seemed to get even chillier as they rode north on the second day. Teer found, to his surprise, that the chill bothered him less than it once would have.

  Lora, on the other hand, was shivering in the chill. Whatever warmer clothes she’d left with had been on her horse and were now decorating a wolfen den. She was pressed hard against his chest for warmth and Teer shook his head.

  “Hold on,” he told her, bringing Star to a gentle stop so he wasn’t adjusting his clothing at speed. The heavy gray jacket didn’t come off easily, since the concealed armor plates made it stiff in awkward places, but he still managed to get it off without dismounting.

  “Here.” He passed the coat to Lora, helping her get her arms into the garment.

  “What about you?” she asked.

  “The cold isn’t bothering me much and I do have some warmer clothes in the saddlebags if it gets too bad,” he said. “You’ve got nothing.”

  She nodded with a sigh, pulling the too-large coat tight around herself and leanin
g back against him again.

  “Poor Toss,” she said. “He didn’t deserve that.”

  “Horses generally don’t deserve what we do to them,” Teer agreed, urging Star up to a trot to catch up to Kard as he echoed the old Hunter’s words when the wolfen had first taken Toss. “They’re loyal, brave and true, but they don’t understand what goes on around them.”

  “I’m not sure all people do that,” Lora said. “My poor da…”

  “He knew exactly what he was doing,” Teer said firmly. “He protected you and you protected him. That’s what family does.”

  She chuckled.

  “Fair enough,” she admitted. “Mountin’ Star, did I get lucky. Another bunch of Hunters…”

  She shook her head.

  “Our fates are what they are,” Teer replied. “They’re not set in stone.”

  Kard laughed in response to that, a surprisingly bitter sound.

  “Kard?” Teer asked, eyeing his boss as he drew abreast. “I didn’t take you for the type to believe in fate.”

  “Your name is not carved on tablets of prophecy. Your death is not foreordained,” Kard replied, the words hauntingly familiar. “But there are people whose names are carved on those tablets and whose deaths are fated.”

  “I’ve never heard anything about tablets of prophecy except from you,” Teer admitted.

  “They’re a story from adventure novels,” Lora argued, confirming Kard’s prior suspicion that she was a consumer of the cheap mass-printed fiction that came out of the western cities.

  “They’re not,” Kard said. “But they’re carved in the blood of Spehari and don’t speak to the affairs of the Arani, any of the peoples of this continent.”

  Teer had a sudden chill suspicion as to why Kard was so bitter about that.

  “But they speak to yours?” he asked.

  “That is a conversation for more comfortable seats, warmer spaces and harder liquors than we have on the road,” Kard replied grimly. “But take relief in your lack of prophecy, both of you. It is no toy and it has no gentle touch.”

  With that, Kard urged Clack ahead, gaining distance from the two Merik as he headed toward their destination.

  “Well, that was…odd,” Lora said quietly, her voice muffled by the coat wrapped around her face.

  “Kard is El-Spehari,” Teer said after glancing around. They were in the middle of nowhere, but those were still not safe words to have overhead. “He has not lived the kind of life you and I have.”

  He shrugged.

  “I don’t quite understand what sort of life an El-Spehari would have lived,” he admitted. “But I know he fought in the Sunset Rebellions. Even I know very little of his past, Lora.”

  “And you?” she asked.

  He chuckled.

  “I have very little past of interest, and you already know the parts that aren’t boring.”

  “Borin’ to you,” she murmured, but she didn’t explain around that point.

  Kard took the first watch that night, allowing Teer to set up his bedroll in a sheltered spot near the horses and look up at the sky. With three moons in the sky tonight, it was bright enough to his eyes that sleeping might have been hard if he weren’t exhausted.

  He was exhausted enough that he missed someone approaching his bedroll until Lora was right there. She’d wrapped herself in the blankets she’d been sleeping in and knelt down next to him.

  “Hey,” he greeted her. “What’s going on?”

  She was silent for a moment, seeming to arrange the blankets on the ground next to him, then she took his hand. Before Teer could say anything, she’d guided him under her wrapped blankets and onto her bare skin.

  He figured that her clothes were somewhere in the bundle of cloth wrapped around her, but she seemed to be naked underneath the blankets, and she’d placed his hand directly on her breast.

  “I made a promise for if you let me go,” she whispered as she attempted to open his bedroll. “You did far more than that. Seems like the least I can do.”

  As the blankets slipped partially away, the light of the three moons confirmed Teer’s suspicion. She was completely naked under the blankets, her skin gleaming like polished black iron in the moonlight.

  She was just as gorgeous naked as clothed, the moonlight adding a layer of ethereal beauty to the young woman as she unhesitatingly offered herself to him…and it took every scrap of his self-control to pull his hand back.

  “No,” he said, his voice catching in his throat. “No,” he repeated. “Not…not because you feel you have to.”

  “Teer?” she asked, clearly taken aback.

  “I won’t let you bed me because you feel you have to,” he repeated, taking the edges of the blanket and wrapping them around her bare skin against the cold. “That’s a thing that should be shared by choice, not by debt. You owe me nothing, let alone that.”

  “I owe more than nothin’,” she argued, but she didn’t try to reopen the blankets. If nothing else, the chill breeze was probably helping make Teer’s argument.

  “Maybe. And that’s your call,” he agreed. “But there are things I don’t think should be done for debt. I’d do a disservice to the man who helped raise me if I did.”

  He knew his mother had gone to Hardin’s bed the first night after they’d arrived at the ranch—and her childhood friend, the man she’d chosen Teer’s father over, had refused her. Until he was sure she was there because she wanted to be, not because she felt she had to be.

  “You’re a strange man, Teer,” Lora murmured.

  “Maybe,” he said with a chuckle, coughing against something stuck in his throat. “But I’m the man I choose to be. I didn’t help you ’cause you promised yourself to me. I’d…I’d honestly forgot you said that,” he admitted.

  Lora laughed at that, looking at him with half-closed eyes.

  “Not many men would,” she told him.

  “Maybe. But I did,” he said. “And I won’t hold you to it now I’m reminded, either. Not tonight. Not ever.”

  She pulled the blankets tighter around herself and nodded, looking around at the night and the horses. For a moment, they sat there in silence, then she swallowed.

  “Had nightmares last night,” she admitted. “Almost slept better riding…with you holdin’ me. Could you…could you hold me till your watch? I might sleep that way.”

  The first few moments of that would be awkward, but Teer didn’t figure she’d be surprised by that. It wasn’t what he’d expected her to ask, but he could see the problem.

  “That I can do, Miss Lora,” he told her. It took them a moment to arrange the blankets and bedroll to make it possible, but then she curled into him, under his arm.

  She was asleep in moments, and her slow and steady breathing quickly took him with her.

  13

  Another day took them to the edge of another river, the Irigo. This was narrower but deeper than the Carahassee, and Teer was surprised to see the bridge that Kard had navigated them to.

  “There’s no road or settlements anywhere near here,” he said as he looked at the sturdy stone structure. It didn’t look like anything he was familiar with. From their current distance, it looked like a single solid piece. “Who built the bridge?”

  “You assume only the Unity builds bridges,” Kard replied as they drew nearer. “I don’t know who built this one, but I’d guess it predates the handful of claim farms around here.”

  “There’s always stories,” Lora said. “Books tell there was a race of giants in these parts long before the Unity came. Some of their ruins are left, but they’re beyond the skill and magic of the tribes that remain.”

  Kard chuckled.

  “I wouldn’t put much past the skill and magic of the Kota, or the Leeyon, or the Qwah,” he told her. “And those are just the three non-Unity tribes I know of near here. But the Unity always talks them down.”

  He shrugged.

  “That said, I know this was never Kotan territory. Who knows who
built it?”

  Reaching the bridge, Teer took a closer look at it. As he’d figured even from a distance, it wasn’t a single piece. It was, however, sufficiently fine stonework that he wasn’t sure most people would be able to find the seam lines.

  “Those stones… I’ve never seen work like it,” Teer said. “I’m not sure the bridge even needs maintenance.”

  “I’ve seen a couple like it,” Kard agreed, bringing Clack to a halt while he looked down at the stones beneath them. “We build bridges with steel and wood, mostly. Stone like this isn’t a Spehari skill. There’s some fantastic old Merik stonework on the west coast, but it gets rarer as you head east.”

  “It may as well’ve been giants,” Lora said, joining the two men in studying the stone. “If it’s that unlike any work we know.”

  “There was somebody here who left a few pieces of highly durable stonework scattered through what’s now the Eastern Territories,” Kard agreed. “I don’t think any of the tribes I know have claimed it, but I wouldn’t figure they’re as ancient as people want to think, either.”

  Teer nodded and urged Star forward.

  “We camp on the other side of the bridge?” he asked

  “Let’s get out of sight eastward,” Kard replied, “but yeah. It’s nightfall, and even with three moons, I don’t want to ride in the dark.”

  They were starting to settle into a pattern for setting up camp that split the tasks between all three of them, allowing them to get everything set up by the time Teer had dinner ready for them all.

  “Seven more days,” Kard observed after they’d eaten. “It’ll start getting noticeably warmer now as we head north. We won’t be going all the way to the swamps, but every hundred miles or so, you’ll feel the difference.”

  “Do you figure we’re far enough away for Lora to be safe?” Teer asked, glancing at the young woman.

  “Probably,” Kard said. “But with Carind’s chunk of stones on the line, there’s a significant bounty on you, Miss Lora. Some of our fellows will ride long and hard for twelve stones.”