"Why—no," Traixe answered, abruptly aware of the fact that the young Fighter seemed to know the answers to the questions he asked before he asked them. "The only tunnels we were able to look at were this one and the one you and I looked at a few minutes ago. The others have to be inspected in the middle of the night, when no one is around to notice what's being done. Their locations are in public areas, and— Evon broil it!"
"Exactly," Kylin said, seeing that Traixe understood. "Whoever knew about the tunnels watched to see the areas you and Lord Rymar disappeared into together, then searched the areas once you had left. That gave them the locations of two of the tunnels, and I wouldn't be surprised if they were watching and hoping you would check the others when you
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found these had been used. There are any number of reasons why they might want to know all the locations, and every one of them means trouble for Duke Rilfe. If I were you, I would guard him very carefully from now on."
"My fighters already have orders not to leave anyone alone with him. not even his servants," Traixe said, his jaw tightening. "As soon as it was clear Sofaltis was actually kidnapped, it was also clear Nimram's plans were changing from their usual mode. As soon as we're through here, I'll be going back to him."
Kylin nodded with satisfaction, then turned to lead the way down the tunnel. There was ample headroom, but only width enough for one man to walk along comfortably. If two had needed to go shoulder to shoulder, both would have had to move partially sideways. The tunnel, dry and sturdily rock-braced throughout, had been swept its entire length, and when the two men reached the end of it they examined the heavy door that would look like no more than rock from the outside.
"It seems our traitor hasn't yet made this an open invitation to anyone who wants entry," Traixe said, pushing at the metal barred door with a shoulder just lo be sure. "He probably didn't care to have anyone showing up at the wrong time and giving everything away—which was what most likely happened yesterday with the two kitchen workers. That they were killed rather than knocked on the head or tied up means they got a look at the leader and knew him. I'd have given two fingers of my left hand to have found one of those two still alive."
"Maybe we'll have better luck with the ones who took the gir!," Kylin said, settling his torch into a wall brace before turning to the door bar. "I've had occasion to ask a few pointed questions in my time, and you'd be surprised at how eager most people get to answer them."
Traixe smiled as he stepped back from the door, giving Kylin the room he needed. He'd heard more than a few stories about the questioning methods used by King's Fighters, and wouldn't have cared to be subjected to them himself. As long as they could later show that the man they questioned was one of those breaking the Law, they could do anything they pleased—and did. Most of the time just being face to
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face with King's Fighters made a man babble his head off—to be sure they didn't find it necessary to remove it in some other, far less pleasant, way.
Once the bar was slid free of its seating, the two men put shoulders to the rock door and pushed. It opened slowly but easily, letting them out into a dark, starlit night, somewhere below the castle in the empty, boulder-strewn area to one side of the road. Kylin stepped back inside for his torch, then the two men separated to examine the ground of the area, neither one having much hope of finding anything. Most of the area was too rocky to take any decent ground-trace, but if they could just find something—
"Lord Kylin, over here," Traixe called softly after several silent moments, a restrained excitement in his voice. Kylin turned to see his dark form folded into a crouch, his torch flame moving slightly to the urgings of the gentle night-breeze, and quickly went to join him.
"Look at that," Traixe said, pointing to the piece of ground he crouched over. "There was a wagon standing here on this grassy patch, and those rocks over there would have blocked sight of it from the road. But look at that track."
Kylin crouched across from the other man and added the light of his own torch, but it wasn't really necessary. Even the single torch showed the track clearly, a track that shouldn't have been anywhere near as obvious.
"All ! can think of is that the metal bracing has come away from the wheel,'1 Kylin said, putting his Fingers to the odd-looking gouge in the ground. "If the girl is in a wagon leaving a track like that, a babe in arms would have no trouble following. I'm wondering if this was a lucky accident—or done deliberately to draw pursuit in the wrong direction."
"It could be either," Traixe said, no longer quite as pleased with his discovery. "Are you going to follow it or ignore it?"
"I can't afford to ignore it," Kylin said, straightening as Traixe did. "If it's a gift sent by Evon, it's there to be taken advantage of. If it's a trap set by our enemy, I may still be able to make it work for us. Let's get back to the castle. I'll need my horse, some provisions, and your orders to get me through the gate."
"Even a track like that won't be easy to follow at night," Traixe said as he began moving back toward the still-open
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door. "You may not be saving any time leaving before sunup."
"Whatever ground I cover will be that much less of a lead they have," Kylin disagreed with a headshake, his mind clearly made up. "They'll be expecting any pursuit to wait until morning, so I have to be better off starting right now. If it's a false trail, 1 may be able to discover that sooner."
Traixe knew from long association with nobility that any further argument would be a waste of breath, so he sighed and didn't bother. He also admitted to himself that the young Fighter might be right—which he profoundly hoped would prove to be the case.
Not quite an hour later, Kylin leaned down from his horse to examine the road where he'd come to a halt, not far from a stand of boulders. The lamp he held was the sort used in stables, a heavy candle enclosed all around by metal and glass, easy to carry without losing the flame, and providing an adequate amount of light. With its help the young Fighter could just see the distinctive wagon track where it joined the road, coming from the field of boulders and stones to the right.
"And taking off down the road at a good speed," he muttered to himself as he walked his horse forward. "If they were only a decoy, would they be in that much of a hurry?"
His horse snorted and shook its head, and he had to smile at the unexpected answer. It was the answer he wanted to be true, but it didn't necessarily have to be. Decoys would know that they couldn't afford to be caught, so they would hardly be taking their time. The only faint hope he had was that a decoy would be trying to leave a clear, easy trail to follow, at least at first, and so shouldn't be hurrying quite that much.
"Well, I'll be finding out^ventually," he muttered again, straightening in the saddle. It was going to be a long night and longer day tomorrow unless the trail suddenly disappeared, and it had only just occurred to him that he hadn't changed out of the Flower clothing he'd been wearing. If he'd noticed sooner he would have done something about it, but he wasn't about to turn back just for that. Once he had the answers he was after, there would be time for unimportant
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side issues. He put his heels to his horse's sides, and moved off down the road at the pace to which he meant to keep.
The wagon provided a terrible ride, and Merrol was more affected by it than any of the others. After two nights and almost two full days, with only the second of those nights given over to rest, he was beginning to believe he would be violently ill before the trip was finally over. The other two had suggested they leave him behind at an inn, but he refused to allow that. He was the one who had been given the deeply satisfying task of taking the girl to His Holiness, and he wasn't about to let the task be completed without him. He had the sensitivity of a civilized man and that sensitivity was being abused, but he was willing
to face anything just so long as the insult given him was repaid many times over.
"And this illness is your fault as well, you trollop," he murmured with all the spite he felt, looking down at the girl who lay senseless in the blankets beyond his folded legs. "If that awful liquid wasn't necessary to keep you under control, I would not have needed to breathe those traces of it. I've been nauseated ever since, and you'll pay for that, too."
Which he would be sure to see to. Without knowing what His Holiness intended for the girl he hadn't dared do as he liked with her, but he'd still been able to return some measure of the humiliation she had given to him. He had been sent to her as her father's messenger, and although it had been his intention to lead her into a trap where she might be taken, she hadn't known that. In the spirit of generosity he had attempted to correct her in regard to the unsuitability of the clothing she wore, and she had held him up to ridicule before those insufferably arrogant fighters assigned as her bodyguard. They had laughed at him, at him, and he had had no recourse then but to accept the ridicule.
"But I've made up for that, haven't I, girl?" he whispered, reaching over to the blanket covering her, just as he had any number of times in the past two days. "You made a joke of nakedness, but how amusing would you find it now?"
Removal of the blanket bared the girl's body again, offering sight of it to him as well as inviting his touch. Inviting, oh, yes indeed, it was inviting, an unexpected smoothness that had been hidden beneath harsh leathers. His palm slid up
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from the flatness of her belly to the mound of her well-formed breast, and the sensations brought to him by the kneading of his fingers were almost enough to overcome his illness. How soft that breast was to begin with, and how quickly the large nipple hardened under his hand. This time she moaned as well, moving sluggishly as though in protest, and he smiled as he continued to squeeze and caress her.
"You dislike being touched so, my lady?" he whispered, the dimness of the wagon interior no barrier to his sight of her. "What a pity you find yourself displeased, but consider the future before voicing that displeasure. His Holiness will have no use for your body, but his gratitude for my invaluable assistance in bringing you to him will surely allow me what he has no interest in. You will be fully awake when you serve me, girl, and only then will you learn the true meaning of displeasure. By that time, however, the lesson will do you no good at all."
The girl moaned again and moved about under his touch, as helpless to refuse it as he had been to refuse her insult. It gave him great pleasure to finally see a response in her, but that very response meant she would soon need that liquid put to her face again. As soon as she was given water to drink and thin cereal to swallow. Eating and drinking and then that liquid. Merrol knew he should summon one of the others to see to her, but the illness was rising in him quickly again, too quickly to consider anything but himself. He was going to upchuck, he knew he was, and he began scrambling toward the front of the wagon, intent on nothing but bending over the side of the seat.
I couldn't remember ever having been in a river of confusion before, and didn't even know how long I'd been in it that time. I was lying on something that seemed to be moving, always moving, and harder than what 1 considered comfortable. My head hurt a little, and I felt dizzy when I could feel anything at all, and the smell all around me was almost completely overpowering. Almost completely. Almost. Every once in a while it faded, and when it came back it wasn't as
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strong as it had been. The confusion persisted, but the smell wasn't as strong.
And then came another fading time, when I felt a blanket under my back, and light came from somewhere to hurt my eyes, and then there were fingers touching my flesh. Pudgy, repulsive fingers, I thought, trying to remember, disliking the childish groping of the touch. It's not the first time, 1 thought, moving around on that blanket, not the first time he's dared to touch me. Dared? Why was it a matter of dared? I usually enjoyed the touch of men, why didn't I like this one?
1 moved around again, hearing whispered words I didn't understand, but suddenly my heart was beating faster. I had to get out of there, I remembered thinking that before too, but couldn't quite remember why. 1 could barely move and felt really odd, but the urge to leave was becoming overwhelming. I struggled to open my eyes, had to blink back blurriness when I did, then suddenly found myself sitting up. That hadn't been hard at all, the sitting part, not as hard as I'd thought it would be, but I had to crawl toward the light on hands and knees because of the blurriness. Light meant out so that's where 1 had to go, even if it was harder than sitting up and crawling.
And it was harder. When I reached the place the light was coming from, I found wood and heavy cloth in my way. It's a wagon, 1 thought, the blurriness and confusion clearing just a little, but still leaving me feeling as though I moved through a dream. I could see a road disappearing behind the dream wagon I rode in, and knew I needed to be down on that road. I had to climb down from the back of that wagon, down to the road, down to where it was moving, down away from where I was—
Hitting hard, dusty ground seemed to wake me up, the pain bringing back awareness instead of taking it away. I lay there unmoving for a moment, a receding creak of wheels in my ears, believing 1 was back in mounted weapons training and had just done something stupid, and then I remembered I was escaping. Escaping from what I still couldn't recall, but I knew I hadn't intended simply falling out of the wagon. I groaned as 1 stirred on the dusty road, trying to tell myself that out was out no matter how I'd gotten that way, but there seemed to be something wrong with that line of logic. I
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couldn't quite figure out what, but there was definitely something wrong with it.
Wrong or not, the lowering sun was in my slitted eyes, and years of training had taught me that the first thing you did after falling down was get up again. As soon as possible. I turned to my belly then pushed up to my hands and knees, knelt like that for a moment with my head hanging, then somehow managed to get to my feet. I felt horribly weak and light-headed, as though I'd been sick or wounded, but 1 couldn't remember being either.
I started walking on the dusty road, blinked when I saw a wagon far ahead disappearing from sight around a bend, only then realizing I was walking the wrong way. It was something of an effort to turn around without falling down again, and once I'd done it I felt terribly proud. I'd escaped from wherever it was I had to escape from, and now I was walking the road I'd earlier only been looking at. I was proud of what I'd accomplished, wasn't hurting much at all, and was delightfully comfortable even in the warmth of the afternoon. My leathers had never felt so cool and comfortable, and I began humming to the birds in the trees all around as I walked.
Time receded behind steps and humming, steps and no humming, steps with a thickening fog rolling in. I thought it was strange that a fog should appear right in the middle of a sunny afternoon, but the fog didn't seem to mind at all. It just rolled right along at me, then over me, then nothing.
Kylin was moving along the road at a good clip, his sword loose in its scabbard, a dark eagerness in his light eyes. After all that time of following he was convinced the wagon leaving the odd track was no decoy, and he knew he wasn't more than an hour or so behind it. If they hadn't changed horses just before dawn of the first day he would have had them sooner—or if he hadn't had to rest his own mount the night before. He himself had slept because he'd had nothing better to do, not because he was so spent he was close to exhaustion. As a King's Fighter he'd more than once spent day after night after day in the saddle, riding mounts in relays, staying
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awake by sheer determination, and then fighting at the end of it. Hopefully he would soon be in another fight, one he'd been anticipating for the last few hours.
His mind had turned so deeply
into the problem of how he might get to the girl before the men with her knew he was there, that his eyes registered movement on the road ahead before he was aware of it. He came out of plotting and planning to blink at the distant sight, wondering what it could possibly be. Whatever it was it was mostly light-colored, like a slim bear with its pelt gone. Walked upright like a bear did at times, but didn't seem as steady on its feet. It was coming right down the middle of the road, too, just as though—
Kylin pulled back on his reins so hard his mount nearly reared in protest, but nevertheless slowed its pace to the walk its rider was insisting on. Its numb, stunned rider. Kylin had seen more things than most men of his years, but never, ever, had he seen anything to match the sight in front of him then. He walked his horse at it slowly, distantly realizing that his speculation on what lay under Sofaltis' leathers had been very nearly on the mark, so bemused that he didn't even think to look around for the wagon and its men.
She was free, she was all but strolling along, and she seemed completely unhurt. Not to mention the fact that she was also stark naked.
Kylin grinned wide at the sight, belatedly remembering to glance around but still keeping most of his attention on the girl. The surprising part was that she was up and moving at all that soon, much sooner than he would have expected her to be. And obviously sooner than her captors had expected. He knew he'd better get her off the road until she was back to herself again, and that fairly quickly. If the enemy showed up and there was a fight, in her condition she'd probably try to get into it—bare-handed.
He began chuckling as he pulled his horse to a halt and dismounted, reaching behind the saddle for one of the blankets rolled there. He couldn't wait to see the girl's face when she discovered she'd been wandering along the road, happy as a cloud, without a stitch on. He knew any number of Blades— mostly male, of course, but the principle should be the same— and if any of them had been turned loose naked to trip gaily through the countryside, they would be shouting for blood
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