“Madehy’s dog,” Reandn said.
Vaklar snorted. “True enough. And also a Resioran breed, aya. Guard dogs, they are. Can’t nothing get past them, and yet a family’s babes can climb all over ’em.”
“Wonderful.” Elstan put his hands on his hips, clanking horseshoes and all. “But I don’t want to talk about dogs. I want to talk about what we’re going to do with her.” He nodded at Teya.
“I don’t expect we’ll do anything with her,” Reandn said, more mildly than Teya would have expected.
“She knows everything now — that doesn’t mean she’s part of this assignment.”
“Relax,” Teya said. “I have no intention of snatching away your glory.” If she did nothing more than protect Reandn from Elstan’s magic — well, that was what she’d come all this way to do, wasn’t it?
“You’re too damn sure of yourself,” Elstan said, but again, it was a mutter. He changed tactics then, and turned to address Vaklar, some unnecessary chatter about their morning departure.
Teya leaned in close to Reandn. “That one’s only thinking about one thing — how to get out of this mess with the least amount of blame stuck to him. I don’t trust him a bit.”
“I’m not sure I ever did,” Reandn murmured back, not taking his eyes off Elstan.
“ — heard from the Keep a short while ago, and there are reinforcements on the way,” Elstan was saying. “I think we should stay right where we are until they arrive. We’re safer here than on the road.”
“We’re not welcome here, aya?” Vaklar said, as if he were speaking to a particularly slow child. “Did you think that hunter was bluffing, then?”
“He might have been.”
“Naya, there was no bluff in his eye.”
Reandn seemed entirely disinclined to dive into the argument. Of course, he probably planned to go ahead and do things his way regardless. That’s not really fair. More likely, he knew what Teya could already see — that the big man would not be swayed by anything Elstan had to say.
Surely Elstan felt it too, or he wouldn’t be persisting with the air of a man who had nothing to lose. “We’re safe here, and we’ve got shelter.”
“And how long will it take those brigands to find us? We’re lucky to have had today! D’you think I’m leavin’ my meira hanging out like a target?”
Kalena inserted a chiding comment. “As it happens, I don’t want to go on to the Keep.” Elstan’s face bloomed in triumph, just in time to herald her next words. “I want to go home.”
“What?” Elstan said, overriding Vaklar’s surprised exclamation. “Have you lost your mind?”
Kalena instantly flushed bright red. “No more than you, you sorry imitation of a wizard! Do you think the others can’t see what drives you to hide in the barn until your Keep soldiers can protect you?”
“Highborn bitch!” Elstan spat back at her.
Vaklar erupted. “Naya!” he cried, stepping in on the wizard. “You’ll not speak so to her!”
“It’s about time someone did!”
Teya stepped back, wanting nothing of their hot and dangerous words. Thank the Bright Goddess, Reandn had had enough; he moved up behind Elstan, his body language carefully neutral — a quiet calm in the storm of their anger. Gently, he set his hand on Elstan’s shoulder.
Elstan whirled, anger distorting his face and his reason, his arm upraised. How Reandn dodged so quickly was beyond Teya; she had time to do nothing more than hold her breath, and then release it in a cry when Elstan’s reach turned unnaturally long.
With a discernable crack of metal, Reandn twisted and fell, rolling once to get his feet back under him — and then he lost momentum and wobbled, looking completely baffled. Blood ran down his face and splattered the dirt as he headed back down again.
Elstan looked at the horseshoes in his hand, his expression just as baffled as Reandn’s.
“Tits,” Vaklar snarled, pushing the wizard aside to get to Reandn.
Elstan said hesitantly, “I didn’t mean —”
“Shut up!” Vaklar knelt beside Reandn, who had ended up on hands and knees while his blood pooled in the dirt. Vaklar put a less than gentle but entirely expedient hand in Reandn’s hair and pulled his head up; both he and Teya sighed in relief. The old cut was reopened, deeper and longer but no threat to his vision.
Vaklar released Reandn’s hair and absently patted his shoulder as he looked up at the wizard to say softly, “You were lucky, then, ladaboy.”
“Now?” Reandn said, indistinctly. “Now can I kill him?”
~~~~~
Kacey rode with her hands lashed before her and the reins in someone else’s hands, unable to put her twisted ankle in the stirrup. She wasn’t sure how she’d manage to dismount, but she had a strong suspicion that someone would simply yank her out of the saddle.
She wasn’t sure she’d notice the new bruises.
“Stupid,” her captors had told her when she didn’t immediately answer their questions — and then, when she’d felt blood trickling down her chin and wiped it off to stare at her fingers in astonishment like she’d never seen the stuff before, “It’s your own fault, lassagirl.”
Lassagirl?
Rethia stumbled afoot ahead of Kacey’s horse. While Kacey recovered from her rough treatment, Rethia had promptly told the brigands that she and Kacey were looking for a friend, but didn’t know the area and so didn’t know the best way to get there. At Kacey’s expression she’d added calmly, “There’s no reason not to tell them. Why should they care?”
And she was right.
If only Kacey had had time to think before they had hauled her up in front of Lamar’s body to throw questions and slaps at her, she, too, might have realized that the best option was to tell the simple truth. As it was, her stubbornness — born of the immediate assumption that these people were tangled in whatever had happened to Reandn — had made them suspicious.
The horse lurched, and Kacey clutched at the saddle. She ignored the amusement from the brigands and sat straighter, removing her death grip from the low pommel, her face burning with humiliation as well as with welts. The man leading her only smiled more widely.
Silently, savagely, she wished wicked boils upon him. As if she could feel Kacey’s distress — no doubt she could — Rethia turned to catch Kacey’s eye; the man planted a hand in the middle of her back and shoved.
“Keep your mind on movin’, aya?” he growled at her.
Whoever they were... they weren’t from Keland.
Eventually they entered a sheltered dip of land dotted with lean-tos and blackened fire rings; at the back of it, the land rose steeply, topped by a number of massive, jumbled rocks. In the deepest part of the gentle dip, the coals of a large central fire glowed and occasionally licked fire up charred wood. Someone dragged Rethia toward it, and the man leading Kacey’s horse stopped, giving Kacey an amused and meaningful look — her one chance, she quickly realized, to dismount on her own.
Promptly, she set about being just that. In clumsy, aching movements, she swung her injured leg over the horse’s rump to stand in the stirrup, jerking her foot out so she could land on it as well.
Of course she fell right back on her bottom, providing yet more amusement for the man. Boils, she thought at him, regaining a little of the spirit she’d lost during their encounter. Many, many boils. And she chose several specific sites of affliction.
“C’mon, then,” he told her, still grinning. “You’ve got more questions to answer.”
And answer them she would, for Rethia had been right — fighting would only make things worse. And hurt more. As far as answering truthfully was concerned... that was another matter altogether. But then, so was getting to that fire ring. “I can’t walk,” she told him.
“Want I should drag you, then? Might take two of us, but it can be done.”
Kacey bit her lip. “I —” she said, as he turned impatient, “Let me crawl. I can crawl.”
“Do it, then,”
he said.
Jaw tightening on tears of humiliation, Kacey crawled. Bruising her knees on stones and roots, she made her way to Rethia’s side, where Rethia pulled her into a quick and desperately tight embrace, murmuring, “Shhhh... shhh...”
Someone jerked them apart, but — Ardrith’s Graces — allowed Kacey to clutch her sister’s hand. She wiped away the unshed tears that blurred her vision, and lifted her head to see what they faced.
A small gathering of ragged men and women sat on logs around the fire, but none of them — for the moment — paid their captives any heed. One man sat alone on the largest log, continuing his conversation with the man closest to him. He was a lean man, with a neatly trimmed black beard and the hardest eyes Kacey had ever seen; his clothes and manner didn’t fit with the others, and his attitude spoke of a man used to being heard. “We should have searched for them all the night, if that’s what it took. Now they’re probably holed up with one of these cursedly stubborn hill folk. You should have backed me, Fiers.”
Who are they looking for?
“Naya,” Fiers growled. “We lost more people than they — and no one got away whole. Even your bloody damn wizard couldn’t stir magic. Not that it’s done us any good from the start, an’ I’d be quit of it right now, could I.”
The other man gave a derisive snort. “As if one who shuns magic could make such a judgment. What do you think kept you safe from their wizard’s spells?”
“Aya, an’ he yet lives, doesn’t he?”
They glared at one another until the man said softly, “The point is, you failed me last night.”
“Aya, but not my people,” Fiers said, unperturbed. “Were they even able to track down our quarry in that dark night, there’d have been nothing left of them to do aught about it. Have your wizard spell out the location, an’ you’re so eager to use magic in our faces.”
“Stupid,” the man said, displaying dramatic patience. “No wonder my sponsor wanted me in charge. Their wizard would feel that, would he not? And then they’d be prepared — and so would whoever of these hill folk that took them in. We don’t want this thing to grow, do we? No, now that you’ve prevented us from dealing with them cleanly, we’ll at least try to take them by surprise when we do locate them. Or are you going to thwart me on this matter, too — and lose the support my sponsor brings?”
“Naya,” Fiers muttered. He jerked his chin at Kacey and Rethia, instantly destroying the small spot of calm Kacey had built around herself. “See to them, then, Arik, an’ you’re so eager to hold on to decisions.”
The other man eyed him a moment, clearly unsatisfied. Arik, who obviously thought himself in charge. But inevitably, and all too soon, he turned back to Kacey and Rethia. “I see one of you wasn’t very cooperative,” he noted, and then glanced up to the man from the band. “What’s up, then?”
“Found them in the woods, well off the path. Up to something then, aya? That one wouldn’t talk. The other was smarter. Said they’d just got lost looking for a friend who lives around here — one of those trappers, most like. Reasonable enough... if that one hadn’t have been so determined to keep it from us. Thought you might like a chance to talk to ’em.”
“I was just confused,” Kacey said, no trace of defiance in her voice — or in her heart, not at that moment. There was a hard edge to some of these people, and the kind of intensity she saw most often in Reandn. “I fell off my horse... and you’d killed Lamar.”
“Local that was with ’em,” the man explained to his compatriot. “Didn’t mean to kill him... his horse fell.”
“Unfortunate. But we should be able to get the story from these two.”
Arik’s expression, while hardly benign, held no particular malice, either — but his calm certainty struck Kacey as infinitely more frightening. She tightened her grip on Rethia’s hand, easing up only when Rethia gave an involuntary squeak of protest. “Why are you so sure there’s a story to be had?” she asked, squeaking a little bit herself. She cleared her throat and tried again. “We’re just looking for a friend. We’re healers, and we got a message he was sick.”
He raised an eyebrow and held it there until Kacey moved back against Rethia, suddenly very sorry she’d spoken at all. He made a demanding gesture to someone outside the circle. “You may well be telling the truth — in which case we’ll hold you here until we’re through with our business. On the other hand, the people we’re looking for are probably all wounded in some fashion or other... so maybe you can help us after all, aya? Maybe they’re one and the same.”
At her chagrined expression, he burst out laughing. “Don’t take it so hard. It doesn’t matter what you say now. We’ll have the truth out of you.” No one had responded to his gesture, but he didn’t seem to care.
“It’s all right,” Rethia whispered into her ear, though the cold and clammy touch of her hand belied her calm words. “We’ll just tell them, and then we’ll wait.”
Kacey squeezed her eyes closed on desperate supplication — Ardrith, save us for your own — and opened them again to find that the man had moved closer, and that there were several others taking position behind herself and Rethia. And though she was dressed warmly enough for a pleasant spring day in the woods, she started to shake.
“Now, then,” the man said, sounding harder and less amiable than he had. “Why are you in our woods?”
Their woods? With such slurred and chopped-off sounding words coming out of their mouths? Kacey didn’t think so. Beside her, Rethia said softly, “We’re looking for a friend.”
“And who is this friend?” Someone handed him a steaming drink, and he took it absently, cupping his hands around it and never taking his eyes from his prisoners.
Who are you? Kacey wanted to ask. Meant to ask. But the words wouldn’t come out, though her mouth was open.
Arik grinned at her. “You see? Not easy to say anything that doesn’t answer my question, is it?”
She stared at him, not comprehending, until Rethia whispered to her, “Magic.”
Someone had responded to that gesture. An instant of panic flashed through Kacey’s shivers, stilling them. Arik took a sip of his drink, and then, just for an instant, she thought she saw his eyes turn cruel. Not just a man with a mission anymore, but something more — and something less at the same time. “Who,” he said, turning each accented word into a separate, distinct statement, “is your friend?”
“His name is Reandn,” Rethia said. “He’s... he’s more like a member of the family than a friend, I think.”
He looked sharply at the woman sitting at his side, and she shook her head. “No one in the escort went by that name.”
Kacey decided to get this horrible moment over with. “Look. He’s just a friend of ours; he’s here doing a job for someone and then he’ll go home. But he was hurt, and he needs our help.”
“How?” Arik barked at her.
“How... ?” Rethia repeated, not understanding the question any more than Kacey.
Again, he spoke in those distinctly separate words; it was as much an insult as a threat. “How was he hurt?”
Kacey shook her head. “We don’t know.” Which was the strict truth, but somehow she felt compelled to add, “Probably too much magic.”
He frowned at her. The woman said, in quiet aside, “Sometimes the spell results in a little nonsense, Arik, you know that.”
He frowned at them a moment longer, holding the last mouthful of the drink; instead of swallowing, he abruptly spit it out in the edge of the fire coals, raising a hiss of steam. Rethia grabbed Kacey’s arm as they both started; what little composure Kacey had regained since their arrival fled her.
And then she saw the amulet. At the edge of the fire circle, blackened and cracked and discarded... .
These people weren’t random bandits. They were here after the escort; they wanted Reandn. They’d somehow been close enough to get their hands on the amulet — but not on Reandn himself.
Once they realized what he w
as to them... what they were to him...
Kacey traded a quick, frightened glance with Rethia, who, from her expression, had come to the same conclusion.
They couldn’t be in any more trouble if they’d set out to find it.
Arik’s impatience startled them. “You’re lost. You don’t know the area. How did you expect to find him here? Where is he supposed to be?”
“He’s not supposed to be anywhere,” Kacey said. Again, nothing more than the strict truth, and this time, when she felt compelled to add an explanation to it, she fought against it.
But she lost. She felt the words bubbling up even as Rethia, her body gone taught as a bowstring in her own effort to resist, said damningly, “I can feel Danny. I can find him, wherever he is.” But she didn’t say anything about the amulet. Not yet.
Kacey heard her tears, and lifted a shaking hand to rub her sister’s arm. “It’s all right,” she said, whispering Rethia’s own soothing words back at her, watching the man Arik.
He at first seemed taken aback, but his face soon cleared. “Ahhh,” he said. “You can find him, can you? And can you find just anyone?”
Rethia shook her head.
“Arik,” the woman said.
He ignored her. “You’re sure, then?” he pressed, sounding a little too interested for Kacey’s severely rattled peace of mind. Rethia nodded, not lifting her head from Kacey’s shoulder.
“Leave her alone,” Kacey said. “She’s no wizard. You’ve got one of those already — what do you need us for?”
“Arik,” the woman said, and this time he looked at her. “Didn’t you hear her? Danny, she called him. You know as well as I that the biggest problem among them is named Dan. How much of a coincidence do you think that is, aya?”
Kacey had an instant’s impulse to leap on the woman and shut her up for good, but one look at Arik changed her mind. He’d straightened, his prop of the beaten metal cup forgotten, his eyes on Rethia and his face caught between narrowing eyes and a growing smile.
“She can find him,” the woman said, her own face fiercely alight. “She can lead us straight to him — straight to them all.”
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