Oathblood v(vah-3

by Mercedes Lackey

  Some of the men went out of the camp and didn't come back -- they had gone out on guard duty, Kira was fairly certain, which made it less likely that she and Meri could slip away under cover of darkness. And even if we did, where would we go? I don't know where we are, and neither does Meri. "You've got to know your territory before you can hide easily, or find help.

  Some of the men dipped out bowls full of broth to soak their bread in and sat down on their bedding to alternate broth-dipped bread with bites of dried meat. They didn't seem inclined to talk much, not even with their fellows; as soon as they finished their abbreviated meals, they crawled into their bedrolls and were soon snoring. Kira wondered how they could sleep so easily after the awful fight, after killing and being wounded. Shouldn't they be staring up at the sky, sleepless, or haunted by nightmares?

  Maybe they don't care anymore.

  The thought was too horrible, and she resolutely put it away. Feeling bad wasn't going to fix anything right now. What she and Meri needed do was to get their own plan in motion, to slow their captors down.

  Maybe in the process, they'd find an opportunity to escape. "Want to go back to the wagon?" Kira whispered. "I'm feeling better."

  "I could eat broth and bread -- if you were thinking of that." Meri squeezed her hand to show that she remembered the plan for Kira to doctor their kidnappers' food. "I'll take the robe back to the wagon, if you can bring food for both of us."

  One of the men roused from sleep and watched them as they got up, but lost interest when they crept about with all the symptoms of still being ill and weak. Meri dragged the heavy robe back to the wagon and climbed inside; Kira feigned equal weakness and wobbled toward the fire.

  She was afraid that the helpful fellow would show up and dip out the broth for her, but evidently he was on guard duty, and the only men still awake looked pointedly away from her. Maybe their consciences were bothering them -- here were these two poor little girls, obviously sick, who should have been at home in bed, not dragged about in a prison-wagon. That only made her subterfuge easier, and she whispered a little prayer of thanks as she made the most of her opportunity. The seeds were in a drawstring bag that matched one of Meri's dresses and had been meant to hang on her belt. The bag was up her sleeve, and she'd already unfastened the mouth of it. As she dipped out the second bowl of broth, a steady stream of seeds poured out of her sleeve into the pot, the splashing they made covered neatly by the noises she made dipping out the broth. She made sure to take enough bread to hide in the wagon for breakfast -- they would not want to share those beans, and could easily feign an attack of nausea to cover their disinterest in food. Once the caravan got back underway, they could eat the bread without fear of discovery.

  She handed the food to Meri and climbed into the wagon herself, pleased to discover that Meri had taken the clothing in their packs and made a kind of nest out of it. "Hide most of that bread," she whispered, as she got in beside her sister and took back her bowl. "We'll need it for tomorrow."

  She tasted her broth, and wished for Devid Cook; it wasn't horrible, but it was very flat, unseasoned, probably made by boiling unsalted dried meat. The journeybread wasn't any better, but when the bread was soaked in the broth it made a palatable mush that was warm, and it was probably better for their tender stomachs than real food would have been.

  After that, there didn't seem anything more to do but sleep, so they curled up around each other to share the warmth of their bodies, and somehow, in spite of all the horrible things that had happened to them, they fell quickly and dreamlessly into sleep.

  It wasn't even dawn when the camp roused and the men began packing things up, and not at all quietly either. There was a lot of cursing, groaning -- wounds had probably stiffened in the night, and so had muscles. Horses stamped and complained, harness jingled, but all of the sounds were very brisk and businesslike. They probably aren't taking any chances that someone might follow, Kira thought muzzily. They want to get as far away from the ambush as possible. The farther they are, the less likely that anyone will connect them to it.

  Their helper poked his face into the wagon door just at that moment. "Need the bushes?" he asked. He looked friendlier today, and Kira found herself hoping he hadn't been part of the ambush. She didn't want to hate him.

  They nodded, and he helped them out of the wagon again, then took them over to the side of the camp and pointed to some very thick evergreen bushes a little shorter than they were. "Keep your heads in sight, one of you, anyway," was all he said; they took the hint, went to the other side and relieved themselves quickly. At least he hadn't made them take care of it while he watched.

  They continued to feign weakness and sickness as he escorted them back to the wagon. "Want breakfast? You won't get another chance till we stop, and that won't be until dark," he told them, and both of them shook their heads violently. "Right, then. In you go." Rather than wait for them to climb into the wagon, he picked each of them up in rum and left them on the floor. "Here-" He dropped in a water-skin beside them. "Got stomach troubles, you can't let yourself get all dried out. Drink that a bit at a time. Try and sleep; the less noise you make, the better off you'll be. He doesn't want any trouble, and he's not one to cross."

  Then he closed the door, and once again, closed in the cold darkness, they heard the bar drop across it outside.

  Well, this time at least we have food and water, that nice fur robe, and we've padded the floor. She didn't want to risk making any conversation that might be overheard, so she curled back up in the still-warm fur robe and after a moment of hesitation, Meri curled up beside her. She shoved their padding aside until she found the chink in the floor by the thin, weak light that came up through it, and got the knife, the paper cone, the bits of white silk, and the silver beads out of hiding.

  Then they waited, listening to the sounds of the men moving around the camp outside. Some of them were speaking a language Kira didn't know, but Meri nodded when she looked askance at her sister. Jkathan, then. So why have Jkathans kidnapped us? It was all a frustrating puzzle.

  Finally there were the sounds of jingling harness and horses' hooves, and the wagon moved as at least two horses were hitched up to it. There hadn't been a driver's seat on the front of what was essentially a plain box, so Kira decided that the kidnappers must be controlling the horses with one man riding on the near-side beast. That was the way that prison-wagons were often harnessed so that the prisoners inside would not get a chance to kill the driver; it would make sense for their kidnappers to use a prison-wagon to hold them. There was no chance they would be able to break out of it, and nothing for them to use as a weapon inside. As for getting attention or help from strangers, most people avoided prison-wagons like a curse, and if anyone did hear screaming and calling from one, they'd ignore it, even if it sounded like children were doing the screaming. There were plenty of ways a child could end up in a prison-wagon, all of them perfectly good reasons to lock such a child up. Madness, for one, which would make it highly unlikely that anything they shouted would be heeded or believed.

  Well, she didn't need to make any trouble for their captors in here -- she'd already made enough out there. If everyone ate at least some of the beans, in a couple of candlemarks, they'd start to feel the effects. We only ate two seeds each, and there must have been dozens, maybe hundreds, in that bag. But they were cooking all night, and that might have weakened the brew. Or would it have concentrated? I wish I knew more about these things.

  Finally the wagon lurched forward and bumped onto the frozen surface of the road. Meri got the journeybread out of hiding and offered her some. They shared the waterskin between them, but drank sparingly; neither of them doubted that their captor had been telling the truth, and that there would be no stops until nightfall. Well, no planned stops.

  When she'd finished her tasteless chunk of bread, she laid the patch of floor bare, and under cover of the fur, began dropping beads and bits of silk to the road below. If the seeds affected th
eir kidnappers at the same rate she and Meri had been affected, right about noontime things would start to get interesting.

  * * *

  In the uncertain light of false dawn they woke and packed everything up hastily. Warrl had recovered his strength completely, and was ready to go before they were, so he took the opportunity to run down a bunny for his breakfast. They were back on the trail before true dawn.

  As Tarma had bleakly expected, the trail dead-ended on the traderoad, which had thawed and re-frozen, leaving an unreadable, hard, rutted surface. There was no trace of the wagon or the horses they'd been following. Even Warrl couldn't get a scent on a surface like that.

  That would have been all right, since with Need to guide them, they knew which direction to go, but they hadn't gone a league before the road split into three, all of them going south. Pick the wrong one, and their quarry would get so far ahead they'd never catch up. She sat and swore, silently, staring at the damned triple-fork, as Warrl scouted ahead on the frozen surface, hoping for a trace of scent or some other miracle to give them a clue. Then, beyond expectation, the miracle occurred. :Mindmate!: the kyree called excitedly. :Here, the middle road! I have a patch of Kira's and Meri's scent!:

  Now Tarma swore happily. "Warrl has a scent!" she called to the other two, and sent her mare loping down the uneven surface as they followed the kyree. Warrl went on ahead, reporting tiny patches of scent at uneven intervals, confirming that the first patch wasn't a fluke.

  "What is he picking up?" Kethry asked, wonder-ingly. "What could he possibly be picking up?"

  "I don't know," Tarma began, "Maybe one of them managed to rub a hand on a wheel, but you'd think he'd have picked that up before this-"

  "I think I know!" Jadrie suddenly said, and urged her horse ahead of theirs. She dangled down from the saddle in a trick Tarma had taught her and snatched something tiny off the top of a rut without pausing, then turned her horse and came back to them. "Look!" she said in triumph, holding up a tiny thread of white. It didn't look like anything.

  "What in-" Tarma went cross-eyed trying to look at it.

  Jadrie grinned. "It's the white silk embroidery thread I gave Meri for Midwinter. Remember, you've trained Kira, and she knows she has to leave us something to follow. I bet they're cutting it up and dropping it out of the wagon."

  "I bet you're right." She turned her attention to the kyree and thought at him. Warrl, if you lose the trail, check to either side of the road. You're following bits of silk, and they might blow off the road itself.

  :Clever girls!: was his comment, and with that sure guide, they were able to increase their pace to the ground-eating lope that best suited the kyree, even when the road branched, and branched again.

  By midmorning, they came upon the kidnappers' camp, with the scent of the girls all around it. The ashes of the fire were cold, but Tarma knew the kidnappers couldn't have increased their lead by much, if anything. Warrl reported that the girls had been sick, which didn't surprise Tarma at all, and didn't worry her too much. That was a natural reaction to what had happened to them, and it was encouraging to know that Warrl reported no signs that the children had been mistreated in any way -- no blood, no torn-out hair, the scent of fear but only what he would have expected. He would be able to scent a drop of blood too small to see; even bruised flesh would leave a "different" odor to his keen senses. And as for other kinds of abuse -- well, those would have left clear scents as well, and Warrl found nothing of the sort.

  They didn't spend too much time at the campsite; there wasn't much it could tell them that they didn't already know. The snow was too trampled to tell how many men they were facing, though Warrl's guess was around twenty. There was one place where a small tent had clearly been set up, and that meant these kidnappers had a leader, someone who considered himself too superior to the others to sleep beside the fire with the rest of them. There was no scent of the girls at that spot, and it wasn't likely they'd be allowed out of their prison, especially at night, so the tent had to belong to the leader.

  They set off in much less than a candlemark, and when the road forked again, Warrl ranged up both forks until he found another bit of silk, giving them the right direction. But it wasn't until they came across a horse-dropping that was still faintly warm that Tarma knew for certain that they would be able to catch up to the kidnappers.

  Twenty men against the two of us? Well, I'm sure Leslac would assume it was no contest, but I'm not that sanguine. Still, if they'd camped last night, they would probably do the same tonight; they could stay out of spotting range with Warrl to scout, and creep up on the camp tonight.

  "We're catching up -- which means we'd better think of something. Keth, I don't suppose you could cast some sort of magic that would put them all to sleep, could you?" she asked, a little doubtfully. After all, she'd never seen Kethry do anything of the kind -- but it was worth asking about.

  Beside her, the sorceress tucked her hair under her hood as she replied, moving easily with her horse. "That only happens in childrens' tales and bad melodrama," Kethry said, then shrugged an apology. "Sorry, but that's how it is. Even if I could, it would be a sure bet that men as organized as these are would have a countering magic in effect. I see your point, it would be convenient if we could put the whole encampment to sleep and just pluck the girls out of it." She chewed her lower lip. "Let me think about it, and I'll tell you what I can do, other than call lightning down on them, or something equally spectacular and dangerous."

  "Spectacular would be a bad idea," Tarma agreed, and Jadrie nodded, so she added for Jadrie's benefit, "Because-?"

  "We don't know who these people are or where they're going; we don't know who is watching for them or coming to meet them. Doing something spectacular could bring down more trouble than we can deal with." Jadrie had that lesson by heart, at least. "The ideal thing would be to draw them out of the camp, one at time, and pick them off that way," Kethry mused. "But we'd have to do it quickly enough that they wouldn't notice until we'd whittled their numbers down to a manageable size."

  "We'd need something to draw them out," Tarma pointed out. "As fast as they're trying to go, I doubt that they're going to stop to hunt, no matter how tempting the game looks. I just can't think of anything likely to bring them out one at a time."

  "Maybe something will occur to us." Kethry dismissed all speculations, and glanced up at the overcast sky. "Maybe I can do something with the weather. Or maybe I could cast a glamour to make them think they are under attack by a large force,"

  :Mindmate-: Warrl's "voice" was attenuated by distance. :I believe you had better stop now and come in carefully. They've been forced to camp.: There was savage good humor in his thoughts. :Evidently whatever made the children ill is ... contagious. Or it has been made to seem so. I'll come back and meet you halfway.:

  * * *

  When the effect of the seeds struck, it was fortunately quite gradual, so it didn't look like the mass poisoning it really was.

  Just about noontime, the men who had eaten the most began to sicken. Although the girls couldn't make out exactly what was happening, Kira heard voices strained and distressed, then sounds she thought meant that riders were dropping back for a moment, then returning -- and each time that happened, the wagon slowed a little more. The leader was annoyed at first, then angry, but there wasn't anything he could do about it -- the men weren't in control of their stomachs anymore, their stomachs were in control of them.

  Kira and Meri exchanged grins in the semidarkness of the wagon; after all, only one of the men out there had offered to help even a little when they were sick, and it seemed fitting revenge that no one wanted to help the kidnappers now.

  "They probably don't even have any herbs or anything to make them feel better," Meri whispered, in ill-concealed glee.

  "Probably not, or I bet they'd have drugged us to keep us quiet," Kira agreed.

  Finally the wagon stopped altogether, and Kira definitely heard a rider slide off the near-sid
e horse and make a stumbling run for the bushes. At that point, the leader roared some angry commands and when the wagon moved again, it was only a short distance.

  Someone unbarred the door, but didn't open it. When Kira pushed on it tentatively, it moved, and she cautiously stuck her head out.

  From the look of things, virtually every man in the group was suffering, but not all of them were hit as badly as the others. The healthiest three were guarding the wagon, looking pale and unhappy. The worst off could not be seen at all, but from the sounds of it, they were off in the bushes, throwing up everything, including their toenails. A couple, including their lone ally, had collapsed on hastily-spread blankets beside a small fire. They looked absolutely green, and Kira didn't think that a single gut-wrenching purge was going to help them get over the effects of the seeds. No, they were going to be visiting the bushes quite frequently, until every bit of the poison worked itself out of their systems.