Just as he got up, so did Kee, who started stretching and warming up. The Sleepgivers exchanged an unreadable look and did the same. Eakkashet stood, and the water afrinn jumped to its feet. Merirat hissed.
“Merirat is going now. He wants you to know he will be waiting for you at the Mountain. He is sure once he gets past the Ruvan Border he will know the way.”
Sira approached the afrinn, who hovered just in front of her, wings absolutely still as he looked into her face. “Merirat—I don’t know how to thank you. Be careful! Don’t let them hurt you! You have done so much for us, so much for me, I don’t think I could bear it if something happened to you.” There was an odd, choked quality to Sira’s voice, and Tory glanced at her to see with surprise that she had tears in her eyes. The person who murdered people for a living—was getting emotional over something that wasn’t even human.
Merirat hissed, and bobbed cheerfully in the air. No one needed any interpretation of that. It was clear he was saying something like “They’ll have to catch me first!”
And then he wiggled through the trees, was gone. They gave him more than enough time to get far out of sight of their shelter—just in case. And then, after making sure no one was leaving anything needful behind, they wormed their way out of the thicket and began the third grueling day of running.
* * *
• • •
Sira would never have admitted this to anyone else, not even her brother, but the farther they got from Ruvan, the more anxious she became. Maybe this had been a terrible idea. They should have gone due south instead of west.
But . . . if they had, they still wouldn’t be in Ruvan; given how far north the prison was, they’d still be running parallel to the western border of Karse. And surely long before they got to Ruvan, there’d be another army massed on the southern border waiting for them.
She was determined not to show it, but she was one big internal knot of anxiety at this point. Much more desperate than she’d been even in prison.
Now it was noon, and they were taking a brief respite from the running by walking; thank the fates and fortunes there was still no sign of pursuit, nor had they encountered any Karsites. The hills were steeper now, and bigger. Not quite mountains yet, but not far from it—and when they got to the tops of the taller hills, it was easy to see the real mountains in the distance, the ones that marked where the border with Valdemar was. Eakkashet had repeated yesterday’s performance in catching prey for them to eat later, but this time catching three rabbits and two large birds that Sira didn’t recognize, about the size of chickens.
At least they weren’t going to starve.
But now that they weren’t in high plains, and the land was exponentially better watered and more fertile, they had to be a lot more careful; they hadn’t encountered any Karsite soldiers, but there were farmers and herdsmen here.
Thanks to Eakkashet, they’d been warned off of one village of the former well in time to avoid them. Villages, it seemed, was how the Karsite farmers here organized themselves: villages in the middle of fields, instead of individual farms in the middle of fields. It made sense, actually; given how tightly the priests controlled things here, they certainly would not want anyone living somewhere out of their sight. And control.
It was a peculiar sort of organization to her eyes; villages laid out in circles, with barns and stock-pens around the outside, houses on the inside, well and temple in the center, and fields radiating out from the central circle.
It was well after harvest, so fortunately there was no one out in the fields but livestock grazing on stubble. They had to detour through scrub forest to avoid being seen, but thanks to Eakkashet’s vigilance, they didn’t lose too much time. It was only after they were a good league away that Sira realized what the odd grouping had been modeled on: a sun-disk, surrounded by its rays. If every village was like this, and they probably were, then every Karsite village was literally an icon of their god.
Probably every town and city too.
It . . . was unnerving, actually. The afrinn laughingly referred to the Karsites as “god-botherers,” but this concrete display of such fanatic devotion that it was even branded on the face of the land made her understand just how powerful that devotion was.
And potentially, how dangerous.
Because every single Karsite, not just the soldiers, was surely a danger to them. They could not take the chance that word of the manhunt had reached even these tiny villages via the resident priest. And that priest would certainly have made the god’s will known to every villager old enough to understand.
Even children were potential enemies. Without a doubt, they’d been primed to watch for strangers and run to alert the priest if they got even a glimpse of someone unknown crossing the hills.
So they had to pass far enough from the villages that they couldn’t see the villagers, because that meant, in turn, they couldn’t be seen.
Now she sorely missed Merirat’s illusion bubble.
Herdsmen were easier to avoid; the herds of mixed sheep and goats milled together on the hillsides like great white clouds, easy to spot in the distance, and long before they themselves were visible to their tenders. And as for the dogs minding those herds—the dogs were trained to worry about wolves and other predators, and they didn’t give a damn about what some priest had said. New humans were not threats, so new humans would be ignored in favor of keeping one eye on their precious charges and the other looking for wolves.
Or at least that had been the case until this moment.
Eakkashet came winging back to them, and landed. “There are two herds,” he reported. “One on each hill. And the land is not good around those hills. I do not think it wise to go between the herds, so the choice is a bog or a field of boulders.”
Ahkhan groaned, but he said, “Boulders. Even if the bog were frozen solid, which it won’t be, we’d get wet, and in this weather, chilled, and we’d have to stop and hide somewhere while you dried us out and warmed us up.”
Eakkashet turned into one of the large game birds he had just hunted for them. “Follow me,” he said. “And when I say down, crawl.”
They moved forward, around and to the left of the two hills, bent over and toe-heeling at a snail’s pace. All too soon for Sira’s peace of mind, he said “Down!” and the lot of them went to their bellies.
They couldn’t see the sheep, but they could certainly hear them, baa-ing, the bells on the lead goat and the bellwether clanking now and again. Eakkashet had not exaggerated when he said “field of boulders.” When they rounded the base of the hill, it looked as if a giant had strewn the valley and the next hill with assorted rounded rocks without even a hint of dirt or grass between them, rocks ranging in size from a man’s head or a child’s ball to rocks the size of a village house.
And there was no good way to get through them.
Eakkashet would walk a path for them for several feet, then jump up onto the top of a taller rock to scratch and peck as if he were hunting for food—but in reality keeping a wary eye on the hilltop. When they had managed to inch their way on their bellies to just under where he stood, he would jump down again and find another piece of the path to get them around the hills with their flocks. Maddeningly, sometimes he had to backtrack, because the way he initially chose was too exposed, or it wasn’t possible for a human to squeeze between the boulders.
It was cold. It was increasingly painful to crawl like this, straining arms and legs in ways Sira, at least, was not used to, bumping knees and elbows on unforgiving stone. And it was agonizingly slow. Every moment they wasted in here was a moment they were not running toward that presumably safe northern Border. And meanwhile the sun moved on blithely overhead, marking time that was passing too swiftly for how slowly they were progressing.
Finally—finally!—the boulders ended in the first piece of real forest they had seen in Karse; the trees ga
ve them more than enough of a screen to shelter them from the sharp eyes of the shepherds. They crawled, one by one, into the underbrush, then into the forest proper, and finally got to their feet. Ahkhan didn’t lead them in a lope down game trails that went, more or less, in the right direction, he led them in a sprint, in a desperate attempt to make up for the lost time.
Sundown found them still in the forest, in a valley between two forested ramparts Sira would have called real mountains. The grass here was still long, but not as long or as stiff as the grass had been in the dry plain—much easier to move over, but it did hide rocks and branches, so you had to be very careful where you put your feet.
There was a stream running through it, which would have been welcome if they hadn’t had Atheser with them. But it gave Sira an idea.
“You’re going to hate me,” she said. “But we should all take off our boots and wade. At least a couple furlongs, while Eakkashet scouts ahead for a place to spend the night.”
“That water is freezing!” Ahkhan protested.
“Yes, but if Tory is right and they decide to use tracking dogs, it will break our scent,” she said reasonably. “I don’t want to do this any more than you do—but it’s not cold enough to give us frostbite, and it’s a precaution we’d be stupid not to take.”
Ahkhan was already at the bank of the stream and removing his boots by the time she finished speaking. He tied the laces at the tops together, slung them around his neck, rolled up his trews, and waded in.
And swore. Long and vehemently. “You do realize there is bound to be a village along here somewhere, don’t you?” he asked as he started wading upstream.
“Eakkashet will see it before we need to worry about it,” she replied, as Atheser burbled with joy and plunged headlong into the water, going straight to the middle and swimming enthusiastically upstream.
Then she steeled herself and stepped off the bank into the water.
It was worse than cold. It was painful. And the cold traveled right up her legs, up her spine, and chilled her to the bones. And the worst part was that not only was it frigid and painful, it was both at the same time; somehow the cold didn’t numb her feet enough that she didn’t feel the pain. And the bed of this stream was full of rocks she couldn’t see, so on top of all that, she was trying not to step on anything wrong and turn an ankle, bruise her instep, or worse.
Worse would be falling in. Very much worse.
Her concentration narrowed to the stream, the streambed, and where she was putting her feet. The entire valley could have been hiding a Karsite soldier behind every tree, and she wouldn’t have seen them until it was too late.
“One furlong,” she gasped, finally. “One furlong is enough.”
“I think you’re insane for wanting that much,” her brother grumbled.
“Ah, Sira?” said Tory, from behind her.
She ignored him, concentrating on placing her feet in the rushing current.
“Sira?” he repeated.
The current was definitely getting stronger. Of course it was. The stream channel had started to narrow.
“Sira!”
“What?” she snapped, turning around and nearly losing her balance.
Tory stood there, not in the stream, boots on, both hands full of some kind of water weed.
“Why aren’t you in the stream?” she hissed. She wanted to scream it at him, but who knew what was in those trees or up on the sides of the mountain?
“Because this stuff I have here? It’s skink cress. It kills scent. All you have to do is rub it all over your boots. It lasts for candlemarks.” He held out both hands full of the stuff to her. Behind him, Kee was rubbing a handful of the greenery all over his boots, starting with the soles. Remarkably, Tory didn’t look angry at her. Or smug.
“Why didn’t—”
“Because you were already in the water before I spotted it,” he interrupted. He whistled like a top-knot quail, and Eakkashet came winging back. “Please come out of the water and let Eakkashet warm your feet before you lose toes.”
She clambered back up onto the bank and accepted the handful of weed from him, managing not to snatch it. She was angry at him, at herself—it was irrational anger, born out of panic and anxiety, and she didn’t dare turn it loose, because if she did—well, there was no telling if he might not just tell her to go to hell and persuade Kee to come with him and head off to the Valdemar Border without them.
And she couldn’t bear that. Oh, the afrinn would stay with her—but Kee would be gone. And—no. It wasn’t worth losing her temper.
Ahkhan took the other handful at the same time as she grabbed hers. As soon as she got near him, her nose wrinkled at the peculiar bitter, musky, pungent aroma.
“What is that?” she asked.
“Skink cress,” Kee repeated. “Smells like skink. Skinks are lizards nothing will eat because of that scent.” Kee took one of her boots from her and began rubbing it all over with the stuff. “Tory’s brother Perry taught us about this stuff, in case we were tracking someone with a dog and he refused the trail.”
“Ugh,” she replied, coughing, as the harsh fumes got into the back of her throat. “I don’t blame them. What do you do when that happens?”
“Track some other way. The dog’s ruined for at least the rest of the day, if not several days, and may even have to be retrained.” Kee handed her the boot; she pulled on her stockings, put it on, finished the other, and stamped her frozen feet into place inside.
“Thank you, Eakkashet,” Ahkhan told the afrinn, “But our feet will be all right for now. We need to find shelter for the night quickly.” He glanced up- and downstream nervously. “We still don’t know where the demon-summoners are, and we want to be someplace sheltered if they’re close enough to turn their pets loose after dark. Those creatures can cover a great deal of ground very quickly. Summoners could be leagues away from us, and the demons could still find us.” He looked at Tory. “I don’t suppose you know a demon-repelling plant do you?”
“If I did, I’d have brought a saddlebag full of it with us,” Tory pointed out. “If your feet are really all right, let’s get moving.”
* * *
• • •
Tory waited until the others had gotten underway;he wanted to make sure neither Ahkhan nor Sira were having trouble walking, and to make certain of that, he planned to bring up the rear.
And keep an eye on their backtrail, just in case, because he had a notion that, even as good as they were, Ahkhan and Sira were a bit distracted just now.
So, once they were well on the trail beside the stream, he turned to peer downstream—
And found himself staring into the eyes of a monster.
It was a winged and feathered creature, hovering right behind him, making lazy motions with huge wings that had nothing to do with keeping it in the air. It had a long tail of two elaborate, curved plumes, and an equally long neck that was bowed in an absurd curve to put the creature’s reptilian head on the same level as his. It was taller than he was, and it looked as if it was made of blue glass.
He couldn’t help hinself. He screamed.
The other three turned, whipping out weapons faster than he could blink.
But then Sira uttered a crow of delight, sheathed her sword and far too many daggers, and ran back to where he stood nose-to-nose with what was certainly a Karsite demon.
Or—not.
“You found us!” she exclaimed in joy, just as Eakkashet the firehawk came winging back to them again, and threw her arms around the monster’s neck. The fire afrinn transformed in the act of setting down, and the serpent-bird-thing greeted him with a twitter.
“Merirat found her,” said the afrinn. “After he reached the end of the line of Karsite troops. This is Halina, who is my old friend, and was one of the afrinn Sira freed from her talismans. It is good to see you aga
in, my friend!”
The—well, Tory could only suppose it was another air afrinn, like Merirat was—twittered back.
“Yes, yes, you are right. We must find shelter quickly. Watch our backs while I seek it.” And with that, Eakkashet transformed again . . . but not into a hawk, into some sort of owl. And he winged off silently into the gloom.
Eventually, when it was fully dark and they were stumbling along with the help of moonlight, and the right-hand side of the stream had turned into a rocky cliff, they found that shelter.
Eakkashet led them across the stream—which Atheser protected them from, as he had promised he could, so they could walk dry-shod—and into a cave just above the waterline. From what Tory could see of it, it must have been cut by the stream in flood.
The water afrinn accomplished his tiny miracle by wrapping himself around each of them in turn, making a barrier out of himself that kept the water at bay. But he could only do this one at a time, so no one, not even Sira, chided him for not offering to keep them dry when she proposed her plan of walking up the streambed.
By this time they were all starving, cold, and exhausted. Tory wanted badly to lie up against Eakkashet’s warm side, and it was literally all that he could do to force himself to go to the water’s edge to gut and clean the animals Eakkashet had caught.
To her credit, Sira came to help too. He hadn’t expected that. She put up a Mage-light so they both could see what they were doing. “I’m sorry I screamed,” he said sheepishly.
“I’d have screamed if Halina had been up in my face so unexpectedly,” she admitted. “It’s just a good thing that no one was around to hear it. If there had been, I would be very annoyed with you right now.”
Well, he couldn’t argue with that.
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