They couldn't fly that many people to safety.
Not in one night.
And not when the moon was almost gone from the sky.
D'lan wanted to fight their way through, but more of the Daliph's troops arrived just after the Tall Bluff Tribe. Hardened, fierce warriors with the marks of combat etched into their skin, they paced the lines of the Black Horse Tribe camp, itching for a fight.
How could the tribes stand up to men like that?
K'lrsa's only consolation was that her own tribe was safe.
They'd found that they could pass beyond the perimeter of the rock formation and none from the Black Horse Tribe could touch them. But if they didn't find a way to bring the tribes through within the next two days when the moon left the sky and the gathering officially began, it would all be for nothing.
K'lrsa and Badru climbed to the top of the rock formation, ostensibly to study the enemy, but more to escape the tensions of too many people kept together in too small a space.
Vedhe joined them. "New tribe. We rescue, yes?"
K'lrsa shrugged. "As many as we can, I guess. But…" She grimaced. "We have to bring the adults first this time."
Badru paced back and forth, shaking his head. "It won't work. They won't leave their children behind like that."
K'lrsa clenched her fists, wishing she had an enemy right there before her that she could kick and hit. "But we need the votes. If we can only rescue sixty tonight, it has to be those who can vote. Maybe…Maybe the rest can flee with the children?"
Even if they did, though, they'd only be safe for a day or two. The Daliph's men would pursue them.
Vedhe shook her head. She was so young, but her eyes were so old. "Children first."
"I want to rescue them, Vedhe, but we have to think of the future of the tribes. Not just individual lives."
"Children are future."
"Yes. Eventually. No children, no future. But…If we're no longer members of the tribes those children might as well be dead anyway. They'll be taken as slaves or have to travel into exile. What kind of future is that?"
Vedhe raised her chin. "Better slaves than dead."
"Is it? Is it really better to be a slave than dead?" she demanded.
Vedhe nodded once. "Yes. Dead is dead. Slave is chance to not be slave. Chance to fight. Chance to be free."
Badru stepped between them. "Enough. We need to decide what we're going to do."
K'lrsa glared at both of them. "Fine. So who are we going to rescue? The children we won't be able to feed and who'll be trapped here after we lose the vote or those who can actually make a difference?"
Badru and Vedhe both replied. "The children."
"But…"
Badru shook his head. "The adults can at least fight. Maybe they'll hold them off another night. If we take the adults and leave the children, the children will be used against the adults. You won't have your votes if the children are left behind to be used as hostages."
Vedhe looked back and forth between them, shaking her head in disgust. "Right thing to do," she said, and walked away.
K'lrsa frowned. If only life were that simple. Black, white. Right, wrong.
Chapter 47
That night they managed to bring over half of the children from the Tall Bluff Tribe, twenty-five in total. It wasn't near as many as they'd hoped for, but with the moon so weak, so were the horses.
Each wing beat was now a struggle; they flew so close to the ground, K'lrsa worried they wouldn’t even clear the Black Horse Tribe tents.
As she, Badru, and Vedhe huddled together in the early morning chill, K'lrsa sighed. "I don't think we can risk flying them again tomorrow night. And the night after that the moon will be completely gone. That means we can't bring anyone else in for another three nights at least."
Badru nodded.
Vedhe shivered but didn't answer, her gaze focused somewhere that only she could see.
K'lrsa hung her head. "We should rest. I want to…" She swallowed heavily. "I want to be awake to watch when they attack the Tall Bluff Tribe."
She stumbled off to find a blanket she could huddle under. It was colder in the shadow of the rock where the sun didn't reach, but at least there was no wind to slice through her clothing. She missed her tent. Or even one of the dilapidated barns they'd slept in on the way out of Toreem.
Badru didn't follow and she was sort of glad for it.
She didn't know what to do with him. Part of her desperately wanted to latch onto him and have him fill the void in her life left by the loss of her parents. But another part of her was so raw with grief that any human interaction hurt.
K'lrsa fell asleep immediately. She was so emotionally and physically exhausted nothing could keep her awake, not even cold stone and the misery of knowing all their efforts had been for naught.
When she awoke late the next morning, she climbed to the top of the rock formation and waited for the Black Horse Tribe to attack, but they didn't. The Daliph's troops clearly wanted to, but the new leader of the Black Horse Tribe held them back, arguing passionately throughout the day, gesturing towards the distant horizon where K'lrsa knew the remainder of the Daliph's troops were.
The Spring Winds tribe arrived late in the day and camped alongside the Tall Bluff Tribe. K'lrsa shivered to see them so close and yet not be able to do anything to help.
The next day she once again climbed to the top of the rock formation. She paced back and forth, back and forth, back and forth all day, watching as first the Winter Rest tribe arrived and then the Desert Storm tribe arrived.
By sunset all of the tribes were there.
All that was missing were the remainder of the Daliph's troops. And those weren't far behind. From where she stood, K'lrsa could see them, a dark smudge in the distance, less than a day's ride away.
As soon as they arrived, the Black Horse Tribe would attack.
It was going to be a slaughter and there was nothing she could do to stop it.
Chapter 48
K'lrsa climbed back down the rock, the weight of a thousand deaths on her shoulders. The sun burned on the horizon, a harbinger of doom, and then disappeared.
As soon as her feet touched the ground, Vedhe grabbed her wrist and dragged her towards the horses. "Come. We go now."
K'lrsa pulled free. She didn't need this right now. "We can't fly. There's no moon tonight. Remember?"
"I know. We ride." She mounted up on Kriger's back.
Badru was already mounted up. When K'lrsa looked at him, he just shrugged.
K'lrsa shook her head. "We can't go anywhere now. It's the Trickster's time. And did you happen to notice the men surrounding us? Do you understand that we can't just ride through them?"
Vedhe narrowed her eyes. "Vedhe not stupid."
K'lrsa buried her face in her hands. "I know. I'm sorry." She took a deep, calming breath. "Let's try this again. Will you please explain to me what we're doing and where we're going?"
Vedhe screwed up her lips, searching for the words. "Man. Little. Fat. Laugh lots. He show me way."
"A little fat man showed you the way? Where is he?"
"Not here. When Vedhe sleep. He talk. In desert."
"The Trickster? You want us to trust the Trickster?" K'lrsa winced as half the camp turned to look at them.
Herin approached. "What is this? What are you doing?"
"She wants us to ride somewhere. She said the Trickster showed her the way. Like I'm about to trust that little…"
"Actually…"
K'lrsa glared at her. "What?" She rolled her eyes. "Let me guess, there's something else you've known all along and not bothered to tell us."
Herin gave her such a quelling look she stepped back half a step. "No. Not this time. But I do know that the Trickster owns the between times. Twilight, dusk. And also the nights the moon leaves and arrives. And he does have paths that aren't part of this world. How do you think he leads people astray?"
K'lrsa crossed her arms, not wan
ting to hope. "How can we trust him?"
Herin gestured towards Kriger. "He sent Vedhe the horse didn't he?"
"What are you talking about? Sent her the horse?"
Herin waved the question away. "No time to get into all of that. If Vedhe thinks she can find her way through the Trickster's land, then you should listen to her."
"I don't know…"
"We don't have a choice. If you can't get those people to safety tonight, they all die tomorrow."
K'lrsa sighed. Herin was right, as much as it galled K'lrsa to admit it. "Fine. But you are going to tell me everything you know about these horses and the gods when we get back."
"Of course." From the way Herin's eyes narrowed, K'lrsa knew she wasn't about to give up any of her secrets.
As she scrambled into her saddle, K'lrsa shook her head to think that her life was in the hands of a god who'd let someone die just for sport.
Chapter 49
Once K'lrsa was mounted on Fallion's back, she turned to Vedhe. "So? Now what? Do we wait for a fog to descend or…"
"Follow." Vedhe turned Kriger towards the center of camp. Badru and Midnight followed behind her with K'lrsa and Fallion at the end.
She led them to a clear space outside of the rock formation and then turned Kriger right, after a dozen more steps he turned left, a dozen more then left again, another dozen then left once more until he was basically right back where he'd started, but he just kept going as if this was exactly what Vedhe had intended.
K'lrsa was about to call a halt when she noticed that Vedhe and Kriger were blurring before her eyes. She could actually see through them to the handful of people watching from the Black Horse Tribe camp.
As she and Fallion followed, a gray fog wound its way around Fallion's legs and drifted across the path in front of them, thickening until K'lrsa could barely see Badru and Midnight, the world around her completely gray.
Fallion continued forward until K'lrsa knew they must be walking right through the center of the Black Horse camp. And yet, there were no tents to block their path, no people walking before them.
No sounds of a camp at all.
They continued onward, in that cold, wet, foggy gray nothingness, occasionally twisting and turning and circling back until K'lrsa had no idea where they might be or in what direction they were headed.
She gripped Fallion's reins so hard her fingers ached.
The fog clawed at her skin and clung to her hair and clothes. It shoved its way down her throat until she gasped for breath.
She wanted to run, to turn aside and seek the safety of her familiar world, but it was too late. She had to trust that Fallion knew the path, and that Vedhe was leading them true.
Out of the fog came the sound of cruel laughter, first on her right, then on her left. It echoed all around her.
"Scared?" the Trickster taunted from somewhere in the gloom.
"Go away you vile little brat." She swatted at the air even though she couldn't see him.
He laughed. "Oh ho. Is that any way to talk to a god when you're in his world?" He danced across Fallion's path and then disappeared once more. Fallion continued onward, steady as ever.
The fog thickened to the point that K'lrsa couldn't even see her own hand in front of her face. Badru coughed somewhere ahead and she shivered in relief to know she wasn't alone.
The Trickster pinched her and she flinched, looking left and right, desperate to know where he was, to protect herself from his foul tricks.
He pinched her again, this time on the left, and giggled as he dodged her slapping hand.
And again on the right. And then the left. Twice.
"Stop it!" K'lrsa screamed.
The fog swallowed her words.
It swallowed everything until she could barely feel Fallion moving beneath her.
She tensed, waiting for the Trickster to attack again. God or no, she was going to give him a swift kick in the head if she could manage it.
But as Fallion continued onward, the fog began to thin. Once more they turned right and then left and then left and then left, but this time they spiraled back into the normal world, its dark sky devoid of the moon.
K'lrsa took deep gulps of the crisp, clean air. "Oh, thank you."
She turned her face towards the breeze, letting the wind play with her hair. It carried the scent of horses and fire and people, smells she'd never loved so much in her life.
"K'lrsa?" Badru gestured her forward to where members of the Tall Bluff Tribe stood, arrows trained on Vedhe, muttering to one another about the scarred foreigner who'd just appeared in their midst.
"Coming." She rode forward, waving for their attention. "Please, put your weapons down. We're here to lead you to safety."
She hoped.
She had no desire to journey back through that gray nothingness and no faith that the Trickster wouldn't claim someone for his own.
Chapter 50
It wasn't as hard to convince the tribes to follow them as K'lrsa had thought it would be. They remembered how she'd warned them about the Daliph's troops and the story of how the horses could fly had already spread with the White Horse Tribe Riders who'd fled that final morning.
But it was Badru who tipped the scales.
He was so passionate, authoritative, and certain of what needed to be done that no one could stand against him. A few members tried, but they all fell before his final question: "What other choice do you have?"
Because the truth was, they were out of time and out of choices. They couldn't go back and they couldn't stay where they were.
None wanted to brave the desert. Not without adequate preparation and with a tribe that knew the desert as well as they did waiting for their return.
It was either follow Vedhe into gray nothingness or face the combined might of the Black Horse Tribe and the Toreem Daliphate.
The choice was simple.
In silence, each of the four tribes packed up their tents, staring nervously towards where the Black Horse Tribe was camped. It was too dark to actually see more than a fleck of red here or there where a late-night fire burned. (From the Daliph's men not the Black Horse Tribe. The Black Horse Tribe hadn't lost all common sense even if they had lost respect for tribal ways.)
Still, everyone was worried that the Black Horse Tribe would discover what they were doing and attack.
They'd never been at war, never had anyone want to kill them before, so every moment in that dark night burned with the frisson of hatred.
By mid-night hundreds of members of the tribes had gathered. They huddled around Vedhe, shifting restlessly, staring out into the blackness.
Badru rode Midnight back and forth down their ranks, stopping and talking to a woman here, a man there, ruffling the head of a young boy who touched Midnight's flank with awe in his eyes. He stopped next to Vedhe. "It's time. Vedhe will lead small groups through. K'lrsa and I will stay here until everyone has made it."
He nodded to Vedhe.
"Children first. Come." She shot K'lrsa a challenging look, daring her to object, but K'lrsa lowered her eyes. Vedhe had led them here, she was in charge.
A group of children—older ones with a few brave young ones who'd pulled away from their parents—gathered before her. "Hold tight." She gripped her hands together to show them. "You lose me. You stay. I come back. I find you. Understand?"
They all nodded, eyes wide with fear, bodies shivering with excitement. She smiled, the scars twisting at her mouth not hiding the tenderness in her eyes, and turned Kriger back towards camp.
They walked forward in a single line then turned right, then left, then left, then left again, the children holding hands as they slowly disappeared, one after the other, swallowed by the black night and a gray fog.
A woman gasped. Another started crying, her husband trying to reassure her that their child was safe. K'lrsa and Badru rode amongst the people, stopping to comfort where they could, arguing where they couldn't.
She tried to hide her o
wn fear, but she couldn't keep herself from looking towards the gathering grounds, wondering if the children had made it through to safety.
She knew the Trickster and his deviant ways; he'd lead Vedhe and the children into the midst of the Black Horse Tribe camp just for a laugh.
Or into a gray nothingness they'd never escape.
How had she ever thought they could trust him?
She talked and cajoled and begged the others to have faith, all the while doubting that Vedhe would ever return.
And then, just as people's voices were starting to grow louder with fear and anger, the high ki-ki-ki of the Rider's call pierced the night.
The first group of children had made it to safety.
They all stared at the place where Vedhe had disappeared, waiting for her return. It seemed to take even longer for her to come back, but at last she did.
People shoved forward, a surge of desperation. Vedhe shook her head and gestured them back. "Mothers. Babies. More children."
A man stood his ground. "Why?"
Vedhe glared down at him. "I say so. And I lead."
Badru rode his horse between them. "We have to work together if we all want to make it through before morning. Sit down."
The man glared at both of them—foreigners, unfamiliar with the ways of the tribes—but he didn't intervene as Vedhe led the rest of the children and the mothers with babies—tied to one another with whatever could be found, blankets, harnesses, ropes—away into nothingness.
Those left behind waited again, flinching at every sound from the darkness, staring into the black of night even though nothing could be seen, until the high ki-ki-ki of the Riders' call rang out once more.
So it went on through the night.
Vedhe looked more and more exhausted each time she returned, but she didn't complain, didn't stop to rest. She just led the next group through. Just kept going like she had when she was a slave forced to walk barefoot through the desert heat.
Rider's Rescue (The Rider's Revenge Trilogy Book 2) Page 15