Reandn said cheerfully, “Not unless you two started seeing things.”
Nican snorted. “Damn cocky wrangler. We ought to send you the long way around, and on foot.”
Reandn grinned. “You really want to be tied to that palomino while you do Hound duty up the short road alone with Elstan?” He glanced across the corral to where Elstan wrestled with his saddle girth, and his feelings must have gone straight to his face.
“Tsk,” Nican said. “You and that wizard. You might as well be Knife, the way you two set each other off. Though he’s agreeable enough this morning — he’s not even rubbing magic in your face.”
“Not a peep,” Reandn said. “He’s probably put it aside for his favorite morning entertainment.” That would be Sky — or, rather, the first few moments after Reandn mounted Sky, when the horse teetered between obedience and flat-out running away.
“I’m fond of that particular entertainment myself,” Nican said. “Wasn’t until I felt that racking gait that I figured out why you put up with him.” His ride on Sky had been brief and speedy and had left Damen snorting with laughter, but Nican had handed back the reins with new respect for the horse. Or maybe it was for Reandn, for handling the creature at all.
“Oh, Sky’s earned his way,” Reandn said. He gave the gelding a fond glance; Sky, tied to the corral rail, was making deep-chested manly noises at the bell mare. Scarred hock, gelded late, full of quirks and eccentricities, the horse had once given his life simply because Reandn asked it of him. Yes, he’d earned another lifetime of forbearance.
“I notice,” Nican said quite somberly, “that you always make sure he’s facing a clear path before you put a foot in the stirrup.”
“Hells, yes,” Reandn said. “I’m not betting he won’t go through anything in his way. Would you?”
Nican’s somber expression cracked into the grin that had been hiding beneath. “Hells, no.”
Damen looked up from the other side of the corral, where he conferred with Elstan and his map. “Nicco, quit bothering him — we want to get out of this town before we lose the chance!”
Little chance of a problem with that — dawn had just moments ago brightened into true day. But Reandn tied the last horse’s halter to the horse in line before him, and picked up the bell mare’s lead rope. “All ready,” he said. “Just let me get Sky sorted out.”
Sky, pawing dramatically for the bell mare, clunked his foot against the corral rail, startling himself into a wild shy against his lead rope. Instantly, he humped his back and popped his hind feet up in an annoyed buck, his ears flattened and his nostrils flared with such exaggeration that Reandn rolled his eyes.
“No trouble at all,” Nican said, and snickered.
~~~~~
Rocks loomed around them, sometimes over them, and always beneath them, dotted in the shadows with blobs of the season’s last snow and jutting out to make the trail twisting and complex. Sky’s breath puffed out with frosty little grunts, and Reandn leaned far forward in the saddle, leaving the horse his head and staying off his bunched, hard-working quarters.
They’d reach a flat area just past this steep rise, and with any luck Nican would call a halt to let the horses blow. Reandn wiped his face — sweaty despite the higher altitude’s chill — and gave Sky a pat.
Behind him, the string of remounts clattered up the trail, moving more easily without the weight of riders and barely hindered by the light packs they shared. Ahead, Elstan lurched on his own mount, struggling with the rough ride, and far too distracted to play with his magic.
Oh, bloody damn. Magic pressed in against him, filling his head; Reandn lurched in the saddle and recovered himself. Ahead, the wizard struggled with his horse, forcing it to a slightly different path than Nican’s — a treacherous path with a jumble of rocks for footing. Why —?
And then Reandn realized that Elstan had his hands full of reins, and no fingers left to twist in magic.
Someone else —
Sudden spell-noise flared and faded, blurring Reandn’s vision and snatching the warning from his throat. Elstan cried out in fear as his horse gave a wrenching scream and went down in the rocks. He tumbled away off its back, falling free to lie just within reach of the horse’s flailing hooves.
Reandn flung himself off Sky, dropping the bell mare’s lead as he scrambled to reach the horse and throw himself on its neck. His hands slipped over its slick hide and he struggled to hold it without getting tossed among the rocks himself.
By the time he slipped a rein beneath his foot to anchor the horse’s head, Nican had dragged Elstan away — and Elstan, despite his dazed expression, protested the rough treatment almost immediately. A good sign that he hadn’t cracked his head open, at least. Reandn turned back to the horse.
Bloody damn. Nothing to do but offer it mercy. The animals foreleg gleamed white and splintered bone, its blood spurting into the rocks. It lay still now, its entire body heaving with labored breathing, its eyes glazed with shock. Reandn looked up to find Nican’s gaze upon him, and he shook his head. Kneeling half next to, half on top of, the horse’s neck, he stroked it while it died.
Elstan, at least, was sitting now, no signs of blood or bone. Reandn caught Nican’s eye and put a question into it.
“He’ll be all right, I think.” Nican looked from the horse to Elstan and back again. “Goddess knows how long he’ll hurt from this, but bruises aren’t usually fatal.”
“Not usually,” Reandn said, his voice hard. “Why the Hells did you force the horse into these rocks, Elstan? You as good as killed it.”
Elstan’s hands shook; he put them in his lap. “Trust the wrangler to see to the horse before checking to see if I even still lived.”
Nican snorted. “Wouldn’t have made any difference how alive you were if he hadn’t kept that horse down. It was trying to get up, Elstan my boy, and just who do you think it would have gotten up on?”
Elstan stayed silent for a long moment. The other horses waited patiently, glad for the break. Above them, Nican’s mount seemed to be wandering uphill, but not at any speed. Finally the wizard pushed his lank hair away from his eyes, took a deep breath, and spoke the first honest words that Reandn had heard from him. “I don’t know why I went that way,” he said. “I just did it. I didn’t even think about it.”
“You thought about it enough to fight your horse,” Reandn said, but there was no accusation in his voice.
Elstan didn’t deny it. He shifted, wincing, and rubbed his leg. What they needed, Reandn knew, was a good stream, still frigid from the snow pack; a few cold compresses would go a long way toward keeping those bruises manageable. Elstan, unfortunately, would do without. He was at least beginning to regain his compasure; a few more deep breaths and he said, “I... yes, I just really wanted to go that way.”
“What about the magic?” Reandn asked.
Nican said sharply, “There was magic?”
Elstan’s mouth fell open and stayed that way; his eyes searched the rocks as though he’d find the answers there. At last he said, “I... I guess maybe there was. Not much of it.”
“Enough,” Reandn said, pointedly looking at the dead horse.
“Somehow it didn’t seem important at the time. I suppose that was part of the spell.” Elstan’s normal confidence, the slightly supercilious tone of voice that set Reandn’s teeth on edge, crept into his words again. “It was a compulsion spell, of course. And it must have been set for me.”
Yes, the wizard was recovering quite nicely from the shock of his fall.
“The same reason someone came at us in the street the other night,” Nican said. “Doubt me not, set by the same wizard.”
Elstan nodded. “He certainly likes his compulsion spells. And I am the only threat to his magic in this escort.”
“Why not set a spell for all of us?” Reandn exchanged a puzzled glance with Nican, not much interested in Elstan’s suppositions.
Elstan answered anyway, prefacing his words with a snor
t. “If someone else triggered a spell before I got to it, I’d be able to counter it — and I am the one they need out of the way so their own wizard can work unfettered.”
You’d try to counter it, Reandn thought. So far he’d been unimpressed with Elstan’s wizardry, but his early exposure to Farren’s skilled finger-twisting had left him jaded to wizards of more average ability. And he’d kept Teya on a tight enough rein that she’d never had the chance to flaunt spells in which she wasn’t well-rehearsed. He said to Nican, “They didn’t try to kill us the first time, either. They could have.”
Nican nodded, his brows set in a thoughtful line, but Elstan scoffed. “What are you talking about? If you hadn’t been so lucky, you’d be dead right now!”
“No,” Nican said to Elstan, with a glance at Reandn to see that his wrangler wasn’t rising to such bait. “Dan’s right. They didn’t intend for that meeting to be physical at all — it went bad when the spell didn’t work.”
“I countered it,” Elstan said. He shifted his weight, testing his bruised leg.
“Whatever,” Nican said, waving away the interruption. “Point is, they didn’t mean for anyone to be hurt. Which means that they weren’t ready to stop us — and that they still aren’t ready to stop us, not all of us.”
“Which means,” Reandn finished, “that they want Kalena on this side of the pass.”
Elstan frowned. “How do you figure that?”
Nican eyed Reandn as if wondering the same thing of his remount wrangler. He said, “If we don’t show up at the pass to meet Kalena, she’s simply going to return to the Resiores in a big huff, insulted. If we meet her as expected, then she’ll be traveling Keland roads. So if they don’t want to stop us, then they do want her traveling in Keland. Follow?”
“It seems like a lot of supposing to me.”
Reandn eyed the dead horse. “Nican... Kalena might be better served if we didn’t meet her at the pass.”
Nican gave the horse a regretful look. “Maybe so. But we’ve got our orders, and Damen’s headed for the apex of the pass with or without us.”
“Which will make things worse — failing to meet her, or losing her altogether? If the Shining Knife rebels are behind this, they won’t give up.” He nudged the horse with his foot.
Elstan managed a skeptical tone, still sitting in the rocks. “You sure Kalena is the one you’re thinking about?”
Reandn closed his eyes. Think Wolves. Think control.
But Nican’s patience dissolved in a flash of anger. “Elstan, goddess’ sake, watch your mouth!” He turned back to Reandn and said under his breath, “Damn cocky wizard. First one I’ve worked with, and I hope the last.”
“They’re not all like that,” Reandn found himself saying, much to his own surprise — but then he couldn’t help adding, “They’re each annoying in their own charming way.” He crouched by the horse, running a hand along its shoulder. “One thing they’re not counting on — we’re on to them now, whether they’re Knife or not. I hope that Damen’s not in any trouble.” He stretched over the horse’s neck to pull the bridle from its head, and tossed the tangled leather at Elstan’s feet. “Go on down and bridle up one of the remounts. I’ll get the saddle.”
“Damen’s probably fine,” Nican said, but he cast a worried look eastward, as though he might somehow see his friend on the other path. “Elstan is the one they wanted at this point, I think.” He turned from his introspection to grin at Reandn. “Say, maybe you should put him up on Sky. He seems to be a nice sure-footed beast.”
“Wouldn’t do that to Sky,” Reandn said shortly, struggling to loosen the girth with little leverage. “And don’t forget that the long route has plenty of spots for unfriendly folk to lurk — and I’m betting they’re there. We can hope they’ll leave him alone when they see he’s not the wizard.”
Nican gave him an unexpected comradely slap on the back; Reandn started, losing his grip on the leather girth strap, and looked back to find Nican grinning. “You do have a bit more to say than go easy on the horses, don’t you?”
You have no idea. With a grunt of effort, Reandn loosened the girth buckles; pulling the saddle loose of the horse was another thing altogether. In the end all three of them worked to free it, sweating and straining; Reandn would have left Elstan to saddle the horse then, but the wizard didn’t look like he’d have the strength.
“Long day ahead of us yet,” he warned Elstan as he hefted the saddle and headed for the placid chestnut the wizard had chosen.
For once, Elstan said nothing.
~~~~~
They made it to the head of the pass — the wide, flat spot where it was possible to straddle the border between Keland proper and the Resiores — just before full dark. Altitude and a clear night combined turned the night cold fast, and Reandn dropped the reins on Sky’s withers to pull his tough canvas jacket from atop his bedroll.
Nican swung down from his horse to shrug on his own jacket, and advised Elstan to do the same — though so far Elstan simply sat, too stiff to move, atop his unmoving mount. After a moment Nican helped him down, while Reandn quickly hobbled the horses to browse while he grabbed the scant fodder they’d brought. They’d end up chewing bark before the night was over; the surrounding rocky slopes were covered with little more than hard-bristled pines and scrubby brush; everything else was long gone.
With luck, Kalena’s escort would be over-supplied, as was the Highborn wont — or her pretty little palomino would lose weight and polish by the time Damen arrived with the supply cart. And Sky, always a bit on the touchy side, had a tendency to colic if he went hungry too long and then stuck his nose in a pile of hay.
Thinking like a true wrangler, at that. And lost enough in it so he started faintly when Nican came up to him, buffing his hands in the chill. “Dan, after all the ribbing I’ve given you I almost hate to ask, but... I’ll feel better if we both scout this place out before we settle down.”
Reandn didn’t mention that he’d planned to scout the area regardless; in fact, he didn’t get a chance to say anything before his stomach growled with amazing volume. Nican grinned, his teeth standing out in the starlit darkness, and added, “I’ve set Elstan to cooking up flatbread to round out the turkey jerky we got in Pasdon.”
“Sounds like a feast,” Reandn muttered.
“Doesn’t it just. You’ll do it, then?”
Reandn, former Wolf First of the Keep’s deep night patrol, managed to shrug and say, “I’ll do my best.” That much was the truth.
“Your best’ll be good enough,” Nican said. “With Ardrith’s graces, we have those troublemakers figured out properly, and we’re safe for tonight. Just take a look around the Keland side of the pass, and keep an eye out for anything obvious.”
“Like someone’s knife sticking into my back?” Reandn said dryly, and was rewarded by Nican’s snort as the Hound went to suit action to words. Alone in the dark, Reandn stood tall, stretching muscles tightened by a day of riding, and dropping out of it into the Wolf he was.
He moved silently along the perimeter of the long-established site and some distance up the towering slope to the west; an irate owl, huge but silent, took to the air to look for a more private hunting ground.
A screecher called from above him; across the natural cut of the pass and up the snow-spotted slope on the other side, another screecher answered. Reandn imitated the sound, outraging the territorial birds into more frequent and demanding cries — enough noise to cover his progress across the head of the trail. A few days earlier, this area had probably been a mixture of mud and the last vestiges of the season’s snow, miserable for traveling — thank goddess for the recent handful of mild sunny days.
Reandn moved onto the road with assurance , long used to deciphering the grey-silver shadows of moonlit rock, tree, and brush; he circled far into that woodier portion of the mountain, hunting sign, and found nothing. He gazed down from the crest of the road, his gaze skipping over the patterns in the drying mud
to look for shadows that, under scrutiny, might turn into tracks.
And then he returned to the camp and slid right on by, to repeat the procedure on the Resiore side of the pass that Damen had claimed.
Come the end of spring, the roads to and from the pass would be dotted with nightly campfires, but now theirs was the only one within sight. Satisfied, Reandn returned to the horses. Sky still needed a good grooming, and all the saddle horses would be ready for their grain portion soon, but it was better to let him relax and nibble first. Reandn scratched beneath the horse’s thick black mane, listening to Elstan speculate that their wrangler must be lost in the darkness, given that there’d been no sign of him in so long. Nican seemed more concerned that the wizard would burn the flatbread.
Reandn dropped the Wolf as best he could, and took his wrangler self to the fire.
~~~~~~~~~~
Chapter 6
The next morning dawned grey and without dew, and Reandn figured they’d seen the last of the sun for a while. Nican climbed to his feet and peered up at the sky with a dramatic groan.
“If we’re lucky, it’ll hold off till after Kalena arrives,” Reandn said, not particularly hopeful.
“That’s truth.” Nican rubbed the small of his back and stretched himself into wakefulness. “And so’s this — my body rues that ride we took up here yesterday. You’d think I’d never been on a horse before!”
“The horses no doubt feel the same,” Reandn said. He’d been up just long enough to take an accounting of them, finding only Sky and the bell mare within sight. Tying them, he poured what was left of the grain into even, well-spaced piles, and gave the string of bells a hearty shake. The wooded Resioran area below them came alive with hurried little snorts and the rustle of hobbled horses moving awkwardly through trees.
“Sounds like an entire herd,” Nican said, waking enough to find some humor in the day; they both stood back while the horses sorted themselves out in front of the grain.
Behind them, in the mostly flat, definitely exposed area where they’d kept camp, Elstan groaned.
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