by Gayle Greeno
T‘ss and Per’la made elaborate stretches, rumps high and forequarters low, extending each hind leg in tandem. Per’la shook herself, long, silky hair flying free and then neatly settling into place, for all the world like a coquettish maiden plumping her flounces.
“Company! Koom and Chak are here!”
“What? They can’t be here. Why didn’t you tell us they were coming?” She began to primp as well, tucking loose strands of hair back under the red tam, pulling her rumpled jacket down, smoothing her tabard with chilled fingers. The full import of their statement began to sink home, making her worry about the Guardians nothing compared with the trouble about to break loose. She stabbed her elbow into Parse’s ribs to catch his attention and realized she’d jabbed him harder than necessary because of her own frustrations.
He looked ready to jab her back. “And since it’s unlikely that Koom and Chak would be traveling alone, that means the Seeker General and Rolf are with them.” He’d obviously put two and two together faster than she. She should have expected it.
T’ss groomed his ruff, caught up in the primping as well. “Well, naturally,” he reproved, surprised she hadn’t made the immediate connection. “Chak and Koom said not to mention anything further.”
Parse rubbed his ribs, all sleepiness gone as he edged around Sarrett and began to fold and tie the bedroll, packing their gear. More riders swept into view around the curve. “Dear Lady, did Swan Maclough bring the whole Guard after us? We’re in for it now! And we never even managed to reach Doyce!”
Sarrett counted under her breath as more dark figures were highlighted by the sun’s backdrop. “No, hardly the whole Guard. But too many just to retrieve us; perhaps enough to go after Doyce and Jenret and do some good. Do you think it’s possible?”
The Seeker General halted her bay beside them. “Well, prodigals, you’ve made a good start but a poor end from the look of things. How lame is Savoury?”
Sarrett stood stiffly, almost at attention, refusing to meet the Seeker General’s eyes. “Loose shoe. If that were fixed, she’d manage.”
Clanking in his ill-fitting armor, Rolf joined them, taking the bridle of Swan’s horse so she could dismount. Parse stood transfixed by his strange garb, the bronze and leather helm sinking over his eyebrows, his face even more angular and pasty gray below it. The heavy wool Guardian’s cloak, the breastplate and arm guards made him appear the exact opposite of military.
“Enlisted or drafted, Rolf?” Parse asked, tremulous with suppressed laughter and nervous apprehension.
Sarrett ignored the banter as the Seeker General swung down, Rolf catching her waist though it took each of them balancing the other for her to gain her footing once she touched ground. Her face had lost its noncommittal mask for the moment, and Sarrett felt the weight of her tired, strained expression, saw the new worry lines and the old ones deeper and more pronounced. Better to know and get it over with, she decided. “Are you sending us back?” Koom’s face wrinkled in warning and T’ss echoed him in her mind, cautioning her not to push too hard.
A narrow smile, strained at the corners, creased the Seeker General’s face. “Mercy, no, not as long as you’re all right.” She shook her head as if counseling herself. “I’ve discovered some things that even I can’t command—such as love and friendship. That kind of defeat I must learn to take gracefully. You’ve as much likelihood of obeying me as your friend Rolf here. He was told to stay behind. Would that I had friends as loyal to me as you three are to Doyce and to Oriel’s memory.
“Now come along. We changed mounts at the last Guardians’ station and picked up a pair for you when Chak alerted us you were up ahead. Parse, if it’s any consolation, Finian’s stabled there. They found him about half a league from the station, so we realized you’d hit trouble.”
Parse’s face lit up with relief. “Thank you! But where are we going?”
“The same way you’ve been headed, the same location, though I hope without the sort of detour you attempted.” The Seeker General motioned to the sergeant to supervise the changing of mounts, and the grizzled man exchanged a companionable wink with the older woman as if they shared a long-standing private joke. “Of course, if we fail,” she continued, “you may all three find yourselves permanently drafted by Balthazar here.”
Thumbs hooked into his belt, Balthazar looked them over, cool and considering before he spoke. “Mayhap I’ll become a Seeker, then, rather than cope with disobedient troops.” Rushing to forestall Parse’s impertinence before it left his lips, Sarrett jammed her elbow into his ribs in exactly the same spot as before and his nervous giggle died unborn. But this time he jabbed back.
Her legs hung lead-pipe heavy, dragging from her hip sockets. Something or someone was sending bursts of dynamiting pain up and down her spine at regular racking intervals, and her hands were swollen again, immobile behind her back, unable to push her body upright. On the good side, the comforting smell of horseflesh and the heat of the beast radiated against her chest and face.
“Lokka?” Doyce whispered, not sure if she wished the little mare into the hands of these people or not. Still, the reassurance of the horse’s presence was a minor blessing of sorts. “Lokka?”
The mare broke into a curvet, jouncing Doyce even more painfully. “Whoa, girl, whoa, gentle down.” Fire lanced through her body as she commanded spasming calf and thigh muscles to grip Lokka’s barrel and ordered her own back upright. To her amazement, it came, and since that did, her head followed, although she’d lacked faith about the natural progression working. She tilted her head back, limbering neck muscles, rolling her shoulders.
Itching to wipe the sleep crust from her eyes, she looked around, wished for an instant that she hadn’t come to, but there was no choice. Lokka dance-stepped again, tossing her head from side to side for attention, trying to nuzzle her rider, now erect and balancing, despite the fact that her feet hung stirrup-less, tied at the ankles with a band that ran beneath the mare’s belly. The mare halted and turned her muzzle toward Doyce’s knee until a rider pounded up behind them and slashed at Lokka’s soft nose with a short whip. Doyce clapped her with her knees and urged her forward, murmuring consoling pet names, wanting to stroke the stinging muzzle.
Nightmares she’d had before, in her sleep and waking ones as well, but none approached the one she found herself in the middle of right now. And then the answer made her guts clench, warp with panic. The dreams! He’d been shaping her dreams, her nightmares ever since Oriel’s death! But why? And how had he found her? Bitter bile burned as it cascaded up her throat, and she threw her head to the side just in time, the stream spattering the rider on her right who cursed and pulled his horse wide.
Vesey! Vesey, not dead. Who had somehow escaped from the fire which had killed Varon and Briony and left her near-mindless with grief and remorse. Vesey, with the childish, unformed abilities of a Gleaner, already lethal at that stage. Now the child had reached manhood with who knew what powers tapped or untapped at his disposal? And unless she missed her guess, powers that had been molded and trained in a very special direction and for a very special purpose. Amplified and molded from his own losses and hatreds, or molded by others to fit their needs and his?
He rode at the head of the line, black-clad back straight, right shoulder hunched higher than the other. The strange white ghatt wreathed himself around his neck and shoulders, stared back at her with its throbbing pink eyes before slithering down like a wisp of steam—or a cloud, its name. The only ghatt she’d ever heard of with a human word for a name, a name not chosen from its own private language. Cloud, a commonplace word, yet menacing now.
Mahafny rode directly behind Vesey, bound similarly to Doyce, except that her hands were lashed in front of her for stability, although she had no control over the reins of her horse, held by the rider beside her. She risked a glance over her shoulder and relief surged through her as she spied Jenret and Harrap bobbing along, bound as well and with riders on each side of them. But
where were the ghatti? A pack horse with wicker panniers on each side might hold the answer. And still no idea as to where Khar was, except that Doyce gave thanks the ghatta wasn’t a part of this group.
About sixteen all told, she thought. Four of them and twelve of the others that she could count. On occasion, she caught the flash of a body at the forest’s edge, paralleling the rough track they followed. Erakwa serving as Vesey’s outrunners, legs carrying them as tirelessly as the horses did the group surrounding Doyce. It couldn’t be possible, but it was. They seemed to absorb strength and endurance from the very earth they rushed across so effortlessly.
But no need thinking about what you can’t understand, she chided herself. The real puzzle seemed to be that the Erakwa had not appeared happy to see Vesey and his group or to do their bidding. An uneasy alliance, if alliance were the right word. Indeed, they acted cowed by his presence, a reaction she could well understand. Near dusk now, not long before all she’d be able to see were Lokka’s ears in front of her, if she were lucky. No more glimpses of the Erakwa then.
“Where are we headed?” Wondering if she could coax the information from the man who rode at her right, the one she’d nearly thrown up on. He had a generously hewn face with rough-molded features, a bevy of pock-marks across his chin and lower left cheek. Unlike some of those riding with Vesey, he lacked their bland, placid looks, his deep-set dark eyes reflected intelligence and worry. His sober jacket marked him a cut better than the others, as if he might be next or second-in-command to Vesey.
The dark eyes deliberated whether to answer or to continue riding in silence. With the shift of a chewed lucifer stick from one side of his mouth to the other, he finally responded. “Hospice. Where’d you think?” Not a hint of malice or meanness in his words, merely a faint surprise that she could believe it might be elsewhere.
“How far is it?” “Near two days’ ride, full two at a normal pace. We’ll rest in a bit. We rode straight through to reach you at the camp, and the horses are weary.”
“You, too, I’d think.”
He spat the matchstick with an explosive sound. “Some, yes. Me, him,” he nearly capitalized the word, “and the new one he’s just coaxed into the fold, love to know what glory he promised him. Others, it don’t matter, they don’t much feel anything good or bad. Wouldn’t mind if we ran ’em right into the ground. They’d not notice.”
A strange description that left her pondering; she rode on in silence, unaware of the sidelong looks the man cast at her. Once, during her training as a eumedico, she had known a man who fit his words. A gifted artisan, a potter who made formless lumps of clay sing with the fluid lines and shapes he brought to them. But he had suffered from extreme bouts of depression and rage, smashing his creations, doing damage to himself and to his family during those bouts, which extended over longer and longer periods of time, until sometimes there were no gaps, no interludes of good humor, creation, or pleasure in life.
His distraught family had brought him to the eumedicos for treatment. Every kind of drug, both natural and chemical, had been tried with no success until finally the eumedicos recommended surgery as the only solution. And so they had operated on his brain, severing certain connections, and he had survived.
But not as the man of before, not the man of depressions, or the complex artist whose spirit lived in his creations, bonded from fingertips to the graceful curves and glazes of the pottery. Now he was placid, even-tempered to the point of doltishness, obediently following any instruction or directive without thought or heed, a living automaton. Faced with a lump of clay, he cast it into beakers or mugs or crocks, whatever was requested, and every piece came out serviceable, ordinary. Objects, not embodiments of genius.
Once they had left him making crocks and forgotten to collect him in time for dinner and beyond into the evening until they realized his bed lay empty. They had rushed out, white coats billowing mothlike in the evening air, combing the grounds, the outbuildings—only to find him still in the workshop, unfired crocks stacked, tilting off every shelf and counter, crowding across the floor, a miniature earthenware army blockading the door. His eyes burned red-rimmed with fatigue, face and body masked with a second skin of dried powder, fingers shriveled from the moist clay, the last pots streaked with tiny lines of blood like decorations. Had they done right by him, she had always wondered? She had wondered what they had seen in his mind to make them do the surgery, but now she knew precisely what they had “seen”—nothing. The first chink in her eumedico armor.
As if fearful that he’d said too much despite her silence, Doyce’s captor jerked Lokka’s lead rein and moved them forward at a faster pace, bringing them closer to the front of the line. But almost imperceptibly, they began to drift back, the space widening between them and the leaders.
Gauging that the man wanted yet didn’t want to talk, Doyce controlled herself to wait for the right moment. She counted her heartbeats, something to concentrate on instead of the cramping of her feet and legs, muscles tightening like ratchets against the pull of her ankle bonds, the pinch at her wrists, and the faint throb of her head and shoulder, almost an old friend by now, given the length of time it had been with her.
“So,” she said to no one in particular. He made a similar sound, almost in exhaled relief, and waited. “So. Do you have a name?” she asked.
“Ya. Guess there’s no harm in your knowing.” He reached out with a broad palm and stripped a handful of needles from an overhanging pine branch, then opened his hand, watching them sift downward. “Towbin. Towbin Biddlecomb.”
“I’m Doyce Marbon.”
“Ya. Know it. You be related to him.” Again, the almost inadvertent emphasis on the word “him.”
She frowned, shook her head. “Not by blood, no. I married his father after his first wife, Vesey’s mother, died.”
“And a right pretty pickle you got yourself into, I’d guess. ”
“You could say that,” Doyce acknowledged. “But why are you and the others with him?”
The sudden flex of jaw muscles made it clear Towbin wasn’t happy the conversation had taken this turn. He fumbled the reins and started to tug at Lokka’s lead and Doyce feared he would speed them up again, draw closer to the lead for safety or anonymity.
There was pain and sorrow, a haunted look in his eyes that craved her understanding, begged her compassion. “Because of my wife. Ah, Lady bright, I love her so! Fool for love, they say.” His eyes softened, gentled at the thought. “They promised to help, to cure her. They’re not, they’re using her,” the words came tumbling out. “And’ll use her worse if I don’t bide by their rules. You see, she’s a ...” And then his face drained white, twisted with pain, beads of sweat popping out along his temples and hairline. He swayed, eyes pinched shut, then righted himself as he cast a baleful look at the head of the line, a tiny tear clinging at the comer of each eye. “Right! Never forget who’s in control.” He clasped his head with both arms as if fending off imaginary blows, groaned, then whimpered, “Sorry, sorry, sorry!” like a small child pleading for forgiveness. “Mayhap it’s better to have your brain sliced and rearranged or sucked clean,” he concluded to himself, and Doyce strained to catch his words. Towbin said nothing more during the rest of the ride, his face averted and anxious.
She gave the camping arrangements that night a rating as rudimentary but adequate—as long as she ignored the limited food, piercing cold, ignominious bondage, and the high, childish laughter of men with partial brains, still a better, purer sound than the shrilling giggle emanating from Vesey at the far side of their camp area. Gnawing ruminatively on the stale half loaf provided her, along with some hard, mold-spotted cheese best described as antique—and not as a compliment—she tried to conquer the feeling that her flesh wanted to crawl away as if it planned to abandon her, flee separately. Every time Vesey laughed it wanted to escape a little farther. Not without the rest of me, you don’t, she told herself.
Mahafny sat a little way off
, hands still bound in front of her as Doyce’s now were, eyeing her similar piece of cheese, then tossing her shoulders and gamely taking a bite. Though they sat near one another, they were not close enough to speak without being heard by the others, nor could they narrow the distance without alerting their captors. She’d tried it already. Both she and Mahafny wore rope around their waists that ran up to the binding on the wrists, and was then tethered to one of the placid but very solid individuals who sat close by, backs to them, but facing a glowing fire. Perhaps later, she thought, if they both took care, they could creep closer and talk.
Harrap and Jenret sat on either side of a fallen log, chained to it by manacled wrists. The first man to dismount at Vesey’s signal to halt and make camp had taken a long iron spike with a broad flanged head and driven it through a link of the chain and into the log with the butt end of a hatchet. How they planned to free them in the morning preyed at her nerves, plagued her with visions of them carrying the log wherever they went, dragging between the two like a corpse.
In the early confusion of dismounting and setting up camp, she’d managed scant time for a few words with Jenret. Untied at last, Mahafny’s legs had played tricks on her when she’d dismounted. Crumpling to the ground, she startled her horse and caused a flurry of distraction until Towbin had cuffed some of the placids aside and hoisted her upright. Still astride Ophar, Jenret kneed the horse beside Doyce as she stood, or rather, leaned against Lokka while she exclaimed and tried to put weight on one foot, arch cramping, toes curling toward the sole of her foot, impossible agony within the tight confines of her boot.
“All right?”
She nodded and concentrated on shifting her foot, increasing the pressure to make her toes expand and spread, looking downward, pretending he wasn’t speaking.
He gave a low, gravelly chuckle which turned into a cough, face reddening above the dark stubble as he tried to conquer it. “Good Lady bright!” He sounded breathless. “Next time I’ll volunteer to run the gantlet. It has to be easier. Is that really your stepson?”
