Mahkas hurried on ahead to catch the boys. He stopped after a few steps and turned to look at Riika. “Come on, slow coach!”
“It’s all right for you,” she called after him. “You’re not wearing a skirt!”
The snow was deeper here in the shadow of the trees where the shade stopped it from melting in the weak winter sunlight. Riika trudged through it doggedly, wishing she’d decided to stay back with the guards and their picnic.
At least she’d had the sense to wear an old outfit, even if it was a little tattered and ragged; she knew it’d be messy and wet trudging around in the snow with her nephews.
Mahkas laughed and turned to follow the boys. Within a few steps he was hidden by the trees, only the sound of Travin and Xanda’s distant laughter reminding Riika that she wasn’t totally alone in the world. Smiling at the boys’ obvious delight and at Mahkas’s generosity in humouring his nephews, Riika slowed her pace a little. She wasn’t really needed. Mahkas and the boys were having plenty of fun without her. It must be something about boys—little boys as well as big ones—this idea that floundering around in knee-deep snow looking for a fish probably long gone in an icy stream in the dead of winter was entertaining.
Riika’s next step plunged her into a small gully, where the snow went from knee-deep to thigh-deep in the space of a single step. Cursing, she struggled out of the depression, looked in the direction Mahkas had disappeared with the boys and threw her hands up in defeat. They didn’t need her and she was going to be soaked to the skin. At least, back at the picnic site, they had a small fire going. Riika turned and headed back to where the guards waited with the remains of their lunch, shivering as she tried to shake the powdery snow from her skirts before it began to melt.
As she trudged back towards the camp, the sound of the children’s voices faded away to nothing and the silence under the canopy of the forest began to feel unnerving. Riika looked around, wondering why she hadn’t noticed how far into the treeline they had wandered. She wasn’t afraid to getting lost. Her footprints, along with those of Mahkas and the children, were clearly visible heading back towards the small plateau where the guards waited. There were other footprints too, she noted, that ran parallel to theirs. Perhaps the guards Mahkas left back at the picnic site had shadowed them into the forest for a way, to make certain they were safe. There wasn’t a Raider in Winternest who wanted to be the one to face Lady Darilyn and break the news that something had happened to one of her sons.
The sharp, unexpected crack of a breaking twig made Riika jump. At the sudden sound a large bird roosting in the trees was also disturbed. It launched itself from the branches overhead with a raucous squawk, showering her with snow.
This time she let out a short, involuntary squeal and then, her heart still pounding, she laughed at herself for being so foolish.
Shaking the snow from her hair, Riika followed the footprints back the way she had come, scolding herself for being an over-imaginative idiot. Despite the blanketing silence, it was broad daylight and there was nothing in the forest to be concerned about. In front of her lay her brother’s guards, left minding their picnic lunch; behind her nothing more sinister than Mahkas and his nephews hunting an old pike in a frozen stream.
Riika saw the edge of the trees ahead and increased her pace, hoping she didn’t look too bedraggled. Between trudging through the snow, falling into that damn hollow and having a bird take off over her head, she’d received quite a dousing in the past half hour. Suddenly, she was glad Raek Harlen had been sent back to the keep. She wouldn’t want him to see her looking like—
Emerging from the trees, Riika took in the scene before her with an uncomprehending stare. The cheery little fire was trampled into the snow. The four guards Mahkas had left behind lay on the ground, the snow stained dark and bloody beneath them. To a man their throats had been slit with a single slash, as if they had been attacked from behind. There was no other sign of a struggle. No sign of who had done such a dreadful thing. No reason for it that Riika’s paralysed mind could grasp.
It took only seconds for the implications to register, but it felt like a lifetime before she was able to scream. Even then, Riika wasn’t sure if it was a warning or a primal cry of terror that she let loose.
She had barely opened her mouth before she was grabbed from behind. Her screams intensified with fear, echoing across the slopes. They could probably hear her back at the castle, but it did her little good. The man who held her was much stronger than she. He lifted her clear of the ground as another man grabbed her feet and bound them securely around the ankles. As soon as he had, the man holding her dropped her to the snow, where a third man jumped on her and bound her wrists in a similar fashion to her ankles and then produced a gag. She wriggled helplessly, screaming as loud as she could, tossing her head from side to side to avoid the gag, but the man who had tied her ankles simply grabbed her head and held it still while the other man secured the gag. They were Fardohnyans, she realised as the dirty cloth smothered her screams. The swarthy man who had first grabbed her pulled her to her feet.
“Riika!”
Mahkas’s cry echoed across the slope as he emerged from the trees at a run, his sword drawn. There was no sign of Travin or Xanda behind him, but that was probably a good thing. Mahkas would have easily outdistanced his young nephews when he heard his sister’s screams. He rushed at the men holding her with a wordless yell of fury. The man who had tied her ankles drew his own sword and stepped forward to face this new opponent. The man who held Riika didn’t pay the duelling pair any attention. He just spun Riika around to face him, breathing hot, foul breath on her before pulling a dark hood down over her head.
A few seconds later she heard Mahkas cry out and the sound of clashing blades suddenly fell silent.
“Let’s get out of here,” the man holding Riika ordered.
Without ceremony, she was picked up and thrown over the shoulder of one of the men, tears of fear and grief saturating the suffocating blackness of the hood as she was bounced and thumped along the steep mountain slope.
West.
Towards Fardohnya.
chapter 49
D
oes it hurt, Uncle Mahkas?”
Laran turned away from his discussion with Raek Harlen and glanced at his brother sitting by the fire in the main hall of the southern keep. The firelight glistened off the sweat on his brow as Travin and Xanda looked on with concern while Darilyn stitched the long wound in their uncle’s arm.
“I’ll be all right,” Mahkas assured Travin, wincing as Darilyn tugged on the stitches. “Your mama will fix me.”
“Perhaps the boys should be thinking about bed?” Laran suggested to Veruca, who was watching over her charges as if they might vanish at any moment. Like their mother, the old nurse seemed afraid to let them out of her sight.
“Will they be safe, my lord?” she asked nervously.
“Here in the keep?” he asked. “Of course they’ll be safe.”
“You thought they’d be safe out on a picnic, too,” Darilyn pointed out as she snipped another stitch with her embroidery scissors. “I want them to stay here with me.”
Laran shook his head. He wanted a council of war, not a nursery.
“Will you be much longer?”
“I’m almost done.”
“Good,” he said, turning back to Raek. On Laran’s orders the young lieutenant had had his men scouring the slopes for any sign of Riika since they’d heard her screams just after midday, but nothing had been found. It was dark now. Between that and a recent snowfall that had obliterated any tracks, there was little chance of finding anything useful until morning. “Have every man you can spare ready to leave at first light,” he ordered Raek. “Riika may still be out there somewhere.”
“Of course she’s not still out there somewhere,” Darilyn scoffed, plunging the needle back into Mahkas’s arm. “She’ll be over the border and in a fast carriage for the Fardohnyan inland by now. You might as well
sit back and wait for the ransom demand, Laran. There’s nothing else you can do.”
Laran was furious that Darilyn was so unconcerned about Riika’s fate. He’d been simmering on the edge of unreasonable rage since learning of the death of four of his Raiders and his youngest sister’s abduction. Darilyn might well push him over the edge if she made another comment like that.
“And if it was slavers who killed the guards and took Riika?”
“What slaver in his right mind attacks someone so well guarded?” Darilyn shrugged. “Anyway, we haven’t had any slave raids at Winternest the whole time we’ve been here. Mahkas said the slavers usually concentrate their raids on the Highcastle pass because it’s closer to the coast.”
“The Highcastle pass is closed,” Laran reminded her.
“Still, Darilyn has a point,” Mahkas added, wincing at her heavy-handed doctoring. “They haven’t been a problem around her for years.”
“Well, they seem to be a problem now,” Laran snapped.
“Will the bad men hurt Aunt Riika?” Travin asked with concern.
“You don’t think they’ll find Zag and hurt him too, do you, Uncle Laran?” Xanda asked in alarm. “They might catch him and eat him!”
“No, I don’t think the bad men will eat your fish,” Laran told him brusquely. “Veruca, get the boys out of here. Now. Raek will see there is a guard on their door tonight, but I want them gone.”
“I want them here,” Darilyn insisted.
“Too bad,” Laran told her unsympathetically. Anxiously, Veruca glanced between the Warlord and the mother of her charges and apparently decided Laran’s orders carried the most weight. She bustled the boys together and hurried them from the hall. With a jerk of his head, Laran indicated Raek should accompany her and see the boys were safe. The young lieutenant saluted and followed the nurse and Laran’s two rather subdued nephews from the hall.
Darilyn glared at him. “You have no right to order my slaves around.”
“She’s not your slave, Darilyn. She was Riika’s nurse, not yours, and belongs to the Ravenspear family. Your use of her while you’re here in Winternest is a courtesy only. So if you don’t like me telling my slaves what to do with your children, find your own to order around.”
Darilyn tied off the last stitch on Mahkas’s wound with a jerk, making her brother yelp, before she turned to look at Laran. “Don’t take your frustration out on me, Laran Krakenshield. I’m not the one who couldn’t protect his family with half a damned army here to watch over them.”
“Well, now, you see there’s the problem, Darilyn, I had half a damned army ready to watch over my family and Mahkas sent them back to the keep.”
“It was a stupid thing to do,” Mahkas admitted as Darilyn began to bandage his arm. “I’m sorry, Laran. I just didn’t think there’d be any danger so close to the castle. I’ll ride out with you in the morning. We’ll find Riika. I promise.”
“You can’t hold a sword,” Laran reminded him, pointing to his wounded right arm.
Mahkas glanced down at the long cut reaching from his bicep to his wrist that Darilyn had so neatly stitched. Laran thought him lucky that the tendons hadn’t been cut and so lost the use of his sword arm completely. Squaring his shoulders manfully in the face of what must have been considerable pain and anguish, Mahkas looked back at his brother with determination. “This won’t slow me down.”
“No, but it will slow me down,” Laran told him bluntly. “I’m sending the bulk of the troops out to scour the hills tomorrow, just in case this was simply on opportunistic raid by Fardohnyan bandits. They may have taken what they wanted—”
“You mean they may simply have raped Riika, of course,” Darilyn cut in.
“Yes, I mean that,” Laran agreed, with a dangerous expression. “And if they did, they may have left her for dead somewhere in the mountains.”
“And if they haven’t?” Mahkas asked.
“I’m taking Raek and a small troop with me into Fardohnya to see if I can track her down.”
“You’re just going to ride into Fardohnya with a troop of armed Raiders?” Darilyn asked in horror. “Are you mad, Laran? Even if they do have her, the Fardohnyans will consider that an act of war.”
“Kidnapping my sister was an act of war, Darilyn. I am simply responding in kind.”
“Why don’t you just wait?” she insisted reasonably. “Give it a few days. See if we get a ransom demand. Gods, it’s not as if you can’t afford to pay to get her back. And it’s a damn sight more logical than you, Raek Harlen and a handful of vengeance-seeking Raiders declaring war on Fardohnya.”
“Is that all you think this is?”
“No, it’s not what I think,” she replied harshly. “What I think is that this is just another example of how you are prepared go to any lengths for Riika, even if it endangers the rest of the family. Only in this case, you’re endangering the rest of Hythria.”
“How is rescuing Riika endangering Hythria?”
“You’re asking me?” she laughed scornfully. “Gods, Laran. You just turned the whole damn country on its ear by marrying Marla Wolfblade so you can get us an heir we can all be proud of. A Hythrun heir, remember? So what are you planning to do? Instead of staying at home like any sane man would do and making certain your new bride conceives our precious Hythrun heir, you’re going to gallop off on some damn fool rescue mission that is totally useless, given that you can probably buy Riika back any time you want, even if it was slavers that took her.”
Laran stared at Darilyn for a moment, too angry to trust himself to speak. That she could so callously disregard Riika’s fate was more than he could comprehend. That she might have a point about a ransom demand only made things worse.
“I will do whatever it takes to get our sister back,” he announced. “And I will take as long as I have to, with as many men as I need. I am not going to pay for something that is rightfully mine.”
“Your stubbornness will be the death of me, Laran,” Darilyn accused.
“I should be so lucky,” Laran muttered angrily.
chapter 50
T
he following morning, at first light, Laran led Raek Harlen and a squad of twenty Raiders out of Winternest and turned them onto the road leading to the Widowmaker Pass. The air was crisp, their horses’ breath frosting in the early morning light as they cantered west toward Fardohnya.
Laran wasn’t expecting any trouble. At least, not until they reached the keep on the other side of the ten-mile pass that cut through the Sunrise Mountains separating Fardohnya and Hythria. Once they reached Westbrook, Laran figured his problem would be the Fardohnyan customs officials rather than armed resistance, and he was certain he could buy them off. It was pretty much a given in Fardohnya that you didn’t hold any sort of public office if you couldn’t be bought off.
Thanks to Fardohnya’s endemic corruption, Laran expected to learn all he needed to know for the cost of a few bribes. Within hours he would know who had brought Riika through the pass, or, indeed, if she had been brought through at all. He would know the names of the traders, know the identity of their wives and children and probably what they had eaten for breakfast this morning.
By dinner time, if he didn’t have Riika back, he expected to know where to find her and to be making plans for her recovery.
Their early departure meant they avoided traffic in the pass, for which Laran was grateful. Parts of the natural chasm were barely wide enough for a wagon to pass through and traffic jams were common, as were fights between the caravan drivers about who got there first, who should have right of way and who should back up—another reason it was known as the Widow-maker Pass.
Glenadal had long advocated the need for some road rules through the pass, but every attempt to negotiate a set of viable rules had ended in failure because the Fardohnyan officials, given the right incentive, could so easily be convinced to turn a blind eye to any infractions. Chaos remained the rule of law and Laran’s only hope of avo
iding it was to cross the border before any of the caravans camped on either the Fardohnyan or Hythrun side of the border last night got too deep into the pass this morning.
The gods were with him, it seemed. They encountered no traffic, although the road was boggy and rutted with the passing of so many wagons. Glenadal had also spoken on a number of occasions of paving the road through the pass, but had been reluctant to undertake such a feat because of the disruption to trade while the road was built and the huge cost involved. Laran wondered if it was still worth doing, though. They could charge a toll to help offset the cost, it would speed up the journey between the two countries, and they could build rest areas in a couple of the wider parts of the pass which would allow caravans travelling in the opposite direction to pass each other without coming to blows. He could probably even get Hablet to agree to bear half the cost of construction if he offered him half the tolls in return.
Assuming Hablet was still speaking to him, of course. There was that unfortunate issue of Laran stealing Hablet’s bride that might yet prove an insurmountable barrier to any meaningful negotiations with Fardohnya.
“There’s the keep.”
Laran gave up wondering about the feasibility of paving ten miles of high mountain pass at Raek’s warning and looked into the distance. A rather less impressive version of Winternest, Westbrook was built to a similar scale, although it lacked a bridge over the road linking the two arms of the keep. But it was still a solid, almost impregnable fortress and Laran didn’t fool himself for a moment that he could take it by force. Certainly not with the twenty Raiders he’d brought with him. Despite what Darilyn thought, the Fardohnyans would not consider Laran and his men riding to Westbrook an act of war. A Warlord and twenty Raiders attacking the keep would be treated as a joke.
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