by Tanya Huff
Ryder should have caught up to them by now. Gripping a fold of her filthy skirt between her bound hands, Danika told herself he was needed at the battle, needed to drive the Imperial army away from Aydori, needed to organize counterattacks and needed to be there where Aydori soldiers could see him and know that with their Pack Leader in the battle, they couldn’t lose. However much he might have wanted to race after her, he couldn’t do it without delegating at least some of his responsibilities. But he’d be here soon.
He couldn’t cross the border, but he wouldn’t have come alone.
Danika could see the same thought on the faces of the women around her. Their husbands could leave Aydori even if Ryder couldn’t.
They were standing upwind of the horses, but after a day and a half, the scent of the Pack had apparently faded past the point where it could panic prey. Pity. Standing as he was between the first and second coach, Lieutenant Geurin would have been crushed beneath the wheels had the horses bolted. The horses continued to stand frustratingly still.
“Sergeant Black!” The lieutenant smiled as he turned. It looked as though both men and officers had relaxed upon crossing the border, no doubt believing as Murphy did that none of the beastmen could cross. Danika’s hands began to cramp, and she forced herself to loosen her grip. Lieutenant Geurin’s smile was triumphant, as though moving his captives a quarter mile out of Aydori meant he’d won.
“They hold four passengers inside,” he told the sergeant, waving toward the track as if the sergeant had never seen a mail coach before. “I want two women, two soldiers in each. Let the fat one ride on her own so her enormous ass…” He smirked at Stina and cupped the air with both hands. “…doesn’t slow the coach.”
“Your father was a syphilitic weasel,” Stina growled, recognizing the gesture if not the words. She grunted as Carlsan poked her in the ribs with the muzzle of his musket, but it didn’t sound like pain. Danika suspected Carlsan had reacted for form’s sake only, responding to an obvious insult rather than draw the lieutenant’s ire toward him. Danika hadn’t yet been able to make use of the soldier’s dislike of the lieutenant, but she promised herself she would.
“One man sitting up with the driver,” Lieutenant Geurin continued. “One man on top facing back the way we came, on guard.”
Danika did the math and frowned. If there were two soldiers riding inside with Stina, that accounted for only fourteen of the seventeen Imperials.
“Hodges.”
The youngest looking of the soldiers stiffened to attention, surprised at being directly addressed, high cheekbones flushing red beneath tan and dirt.
“They say you’re fast. Is it true?”
Hodges swallowed, angles shifting in a skinny throat—Danika lowered his age to his mid-teens—and said, “I run fast, sir.”
Lieutenant Geurin waved off the reply. “I have less than no interest in what else you may do at speed. Once the coaches are loaded,” he continued, ignoring the sniggering from two or three of the men, “run for the battle. Leave a message with the ranking officers reminding Captain Reiter…” The lieutenant’s lip curled, not bothering to hide how much he resented the other man’s rank. “…that his orders are to return immediately to Karis with the sixth mage.”
Even Danika could see that Hodges had questions. The lieutenant ignored them.
“Cooper and Mylls, you two will stay here. Shoot anything that comes across the border after us. Hare, you’re riding guard on the last coach. Anything that gets past these two, you put down.”
Hare nodded. If he believed he could hit moving Pack from the top of a moving coach, he was indeed a crack shot. Or, Danika hoped, delusional about his skill level.
“Well?” Looking more petulant than commanding, Lieutenant Geurin spread both hands. “Let’s go, Sergeant!”
Danika watched a muscle jump in the sergeant’s jaw as he ordered the men to move her and Kirstin into the first coach, Jesine and Annalyse into the second, and Stina into the third.
Hungry and tired, her head throbbing, Danika didn’t have a lot of fight left in her, but they had to delay. The farther they were moved from the border…She sank to the ground and heard the others follow her lead.
Eyes narrowed, the lieutenant closed the distance between them. “Get into the coach!”
Danika bared her teeth.
She’d expected the blow, but it still rocked her back and she let it carry her to the ground as she fought to catch her breath, the pain chasing it from her chest. His knuckles had caught her cheekbone and she could feel it already beginning to swell.
“One way or another…” He stepped forward to stand over her. “…you will get in the coach!”
Blinking away tears, Danika stared up at him and said, “Another.” Heard Jesine and Annalyse echo it. Didn’t hear Kirstin at all. Grinned as Stina muttered, “Have fun, skinny boys, carrying my fat ass up those tiny steps.”
In the end, they were dragged and groped and bruised for very little delay, but every little delay had to count for something. Swearing under his breath, Tagget dumped her onto the narrow seat and dropped into place beside her. Opposite, a Corporal Berger sat beside Kirstin who slumped against the seat back, eyes closed. The center well barely had room for all four sets of legs and the women’s skirts filled the remaining space.
The inside of the coach was utilitarian, as well as less than spacious; the walls, floors, thin cushion on the seat, all black. Like a hearse, Danika realized and was a little surprised to find herself pleased that while most of the exterior was also black, the doors were Imperial purple stenciled with the gold Imperial crest. A large horn of polished brass curved up beside the driver’s seat, the mechanism that sounded it in a polished purple box. Not like a hearse. They weren’t dead yet.
She glanced over at Kirstin who’d whispered, “Someone had to.” in a voice torn from screaming and then not spoken again. This wasn’t the Kirstin she knew. This wasn’t the Kirstin she’d argued with and competed with since university. The Kirstin she knew would have found a way to blame Danika for getting them captured and then declared she supposed she’d have to see about freeing them. The Kirstin Danika knew was irritating, but familiar. This Kirstin worried her. Perhaps believing they were safe from the Pack would make the soldiers less rigorous about conversation.
She looked out the window in time to see Sergeant Black speaking to Hodges. The younger soldier held a map and a compass and nodded so enthusiastically Danika couldn’t help thinking of pigeons. It seemed they weren’t turning him loose to find the battlefield on his own. As she watched, Hodges took off running and the sergeant moved to speak to Cooper and Mylls, probably giving the orders on how long to wait and what to do afterward that the lieutenant hadn’t bothered with. When Cooper and Mylls moved off, she could just barely hear him yelling at Kyne, moving the soldier out of the coach with Stina and up onto the seat by the driver. She had no doubt that locked away from the more honorable men, Kyne would have gotten his own back at Stina for the black eyes, but Danika trusted the sergeant to keep his hands—and the hands of whoever else was in the coach—to himself.
A sudden flurry of shouting made it apparent that the lieutenant had forgotten to assign himself a seat. Boots on the lacquered wood overhead tracked Murphy’s movement from his seat by the driver, over the stowed packs, to join whichever of the men sat at the rear. The coach rocked with the force of the lieutenant taking his seat.
Tagget snorted and Corporal Berger shot him a look of complete agreement.
“Is it…” Danika began.
“No talking.” The corporal shifted slightly and his boot pressed Danika’s leg back against the seat.
“The lieutenant didn’t…”
“Shut the fuck up, lady. Do not make this shithole smaller than it is.” When Berger shifted again, the movement looked more like nerves than anger.
“You don’t like it in here, ride outside,” Tagget told him.
“Yeah, I’ll just tell the sarge you m
iss Murphy and need him snuggled up with you.”
“Ass.”
“That’s Corporal Ass, you dick.”
“Like ass outranks dick,” Tagget muttered settling back into the corner. He looked as though he were sulking, but he also looked fully capable of stopping either her or Kirstin or both of them from trying to escape.
It wasn’t the musket. A musket would be almost impossible to aim in such cramped quarters. It was the man himself. Both of the men. Neither she nor Kirstin were particularly large—Kirstin had often been referred to as delicate by those who didn’t know her—and they had the babies to consider—which ruled out throwing themselves from a moving coach in the first town they reached, assuming the newly conquered locals would hate the empire enough to hide them. Of course, pregnancy should have also ruled out trying to rip the net off. Danika desperately wanted to talk to Kirstin about what she’d done and why, but it didn’t seem like she’d get a chance anytime soon.
As the coach pulled away from the border, she sagged back against the seat and closed her eyes. She’d gather her strength, consider her options, and she would come up with a way to escape and return her small Pack back to Aydori.
Where Ryder would be waiting.
Had to be waiting.
There had to be a hundred reasons why he hadn’t made it to the border in time.
* * *
The logging road wasn’t so much a road as two tracks cut ankle-deep into the forest floor, packed hard with the weight of wagons carrying away—well, if the stumps were any indication, carrying away everything of any size. Had it been a wet spring, they’d have been filled with so much muddy runoff they’d be impassable. Then again, the little Mirian knew about waging war suggested the dry spring had been part of the Imperial timetable. Feet screaming in pain, chest burning, she collapsed onto one of the larger stumps and rubbed the sweat off her face with a fold of her skirt as Tomas raced forward.
Either the coaches were still on the way and the Mage-pack hadn’t yet been dragged across the border, or they’d been and gone and the Mage-pack was on its way to Karis.
Tomas lifted his head and snarled, hair lifting along his spine, and Mirian bet on the latter. He certainly didn’t seem hap…
The sudden crack of a musket jerked her back off the stump, the sound a physical blow. She could see Tomas pivoting left, then right, then left again as another shot rang out. Closely followed by a third, and fourth. Two shooters. He couldn’t attack one without the other taking him down.
Heart pounding, Mirian dragged herself up onto the stump, on her knees first, then up onto her feet. So far, the shooters had ignored her. She was supposed to take care of the silver. With the underbrush not fully leafed, she could see a purple sleeve. Traced it back to a shoulder. Down to a belt. Along the belt to a pouch. How was she supposed to know if it was an ammo pouch?
She could light a candle. Create fire where no fire had been. Logically, then, she didn’t need the candle; she only needed to create the fire. Easier to do if the world wasn’t swaying…
No, wait, she was swaying.
Fortunately, swaying didn’t affect the fire.
Gunpowder burned. She hadn’t needed Tomas to tell her that.
The screaming from the soldier she’d found brought the second out of cover. Before she could find her focus again, Tomas was on him.
She had to blow the candle out now, but the screaming made it hard to concentrate.
Blow it out…
Blow!
Trailing smoke, but no longer wrapped in flame, the soldier flew back about twenty feet, slammed into one of the few standing trees, and slid silently down it to the ground. When he didn’t move, she turned her attention to Tomas. It took her a moment to find him. She hadn’t expected him to be on the track, running away from the border, toward the empire, as though he hadn’t been running all morning. His head was up, but she supposed he didn’t really need a scent to follow given coaches had to stay on the track.
When she stepped off the stump, her knees gave out, her legs folded, and she continued descending all the way to the ground. That was okay, the ground was soft. And from the ground, she couldn’t see the soldier she’d set on fire.
“So,” she said, brushing an insect away from her face, “what now?”
She could follow the trail the soldiers and the Mage-pack had left back to the border, back into Aydori, back all the way to the Trouge Road and Lady Berin’s body.
It took her a while to push her left boot off her swollen foot, but her right came off immediately, pulling most of the bleeding blister on her heel off with it. When the blood stopped spreading, she peeled off her stockings, tossed them aside, frowned, and nearly toppled over retrieving them. They were unwearable now, but she might need them later. Besides, she could tie them around her shoes and hang them over her shoulder. That would leave her hands free.
Because the soldiers probably had canteens. And maybe food. And they’d killed Lady Berin and captured the Mage-pack and they were the enemy and it was entirely possible that the man she’d burned wasn’t dead.
She couldn’t hear him moving. She couldn’t hear anything but a few birds and the pounding of her heart.
But she could smell burned wool. And cooked meat.
After a long moment, she stood. Picking her way carefully over brown grass and tiny yellow wildflowers, the pain of bare feet different at least than the pain while wearing her boots, she kept her eyes locked on the tree. When she bumped up against something yielding and cloth covered, she stopped walking and counted to ten, breathing shallowly through her teeth. Then she unlocked her gaze from the broken branch and looked down…
…backed up two hurried steps, turned, fell to her knees and doubled over with dry heaves as her empty stomach tried to turn inside out. His right side had been a mass of char, uniform merged with flesh. It looked like the fire had just reached his face when she’d blown it out. His hair had been singed and there were blisters climbing past a swollen eye to where half his eyebrow had been burned off. The thick piece of the broken branch protruded from just under his right ear, the thin end was just barely visible inside the left curve of his tunic’s collar, his skin stained red, the fabric not so much a darker purple as black. He might have been alive when he hit the tree, but he was dead when he hit the ground.
Burned so badly, dead was better than alive. And not just for the soldier, Mirian was honest enough to admit. If he’d still been breathing, she’d have had to…
“I’d have had to sit beside you and wait for you to die. Maybe read to you, to take your mind off the pain. I couldn’t kill someone.” She could feel hysterical giggles rising and forced them back. “Except I killed you, didn’t I? But you’re a soldier and we’re at war, so you must’ve expected to die, right?”
It was said, although not in polite company, that high-level Healer-mages could talk to the dead. Didn’t seem so hard to Mirian. Hysteria rose again, and again she forced it back. It wouldn’t help. It wouldn’t even make her feel better, so what was the point. Reaching out, her hand dirty but steady, she touched the charred fabric of his trousers. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.”
Standing, even slowly and carefully, she had to steady herself against the tree. She’d be okay as soon as she got to where she could breathe deeply again. At school she’d learned that they burned their dead in the empire. In Aydori, they exposed the bodies and, in time, gathered the bones and returned them to the earth.
“Six of one, half a dozen of the other,” she said softly, not looking down.
Back where he’d been hiding, facing toward the border, guarding against whatever came after the Mage-pack, the grass around his pack hadn’t even been scorched.
“Sensible,” Mirian reminded herself, easing back down to her knees.
She pulled a pouch about a third full of dried meat and hard biscuit from his pack, slipped a cheap compass into one jacket pocket, a worn coin purse into the other. He had a folding knife, a fi
re-starter, and a telescope worth more than everything else in the pack combined. The shaft was rosewood bound in brass—ornamented brass—and there were extra lenses under the heavy cap. It looked nearly new. Mirian stroked the polished wood and thought about leaving it with him. It had the kind of worth that felt like stealing rather than the slightly less reprehensible scavenging.
After a moment, she laid it carefully on the small pile with the rest.
Not taking it seemed like disrespecting the man she’d killed. Which wasn’t exactly sensible, but it had been a long day.
He didn’t have a watch.
The pack itself was too obviously Imperial army for her to carry, but the blanket was gray wool, indistinguishable from a hundred others. Mirian dropped her finds and boots into it, rolled it up and tied off the ends with her stockings, leaving out only the half-full canteen and one biscuit. Her stomach protested at the thought of anything more and, besides, she had no idea of how long the food would have to last.
The other man would have more food and coin and maybe something else she could use.
She could see the line of his back. Tomas had killed him. Ripped out his throat…
Making her way to the track, she sighed at the feel of the smooth, cool dirt under her feet, gave thanks that the open blisters were up on the backs of her heels, and began walking toward Karis.
* * *
Danika’s scent had been strong on the ground, and the coach they’d locked her into wouldn’t be able to move quickly on the rough track. He could catch them. Hamstring the horses. Kill the guards. Save Danika. Save Danika and Ryder’s unborn child. And the others…He’d save the others, too.
He followed the scent off the track, onto what passed for a country road. The horses’ stride had lengthened, so they were moving faster. Let them. He could catch them. There was a town, no more than five or six miles from the end of the track. He had to catch them before they reached the town and potential reinforcements.
He heard them before he saw them. The pound of hooves against packed earth. The long whips cracking above the horses’ backs. He rounded a curve and saw the back of the last coach. There wasn’t enough dust raised to give him cover, but he didn’t care. They’d die. They’d all die. Every last one of…