Ander moved restlessly. Jeratt saw that and elbowed him still.
“We’re not staying,” Kerian said gently. “We have to keep moving.”
The young man’s eyes lighted with interest. “I’d like to be doing that myself,” he said. He looked right and left, as though someone might be concealed in the deepening shadows of the falling hearth fire. “I’d like to pay back one of them Knights. Or a draconian.”
It should have been all that was said, that night before the dying fire, but Kerian said one thing more: “Do others feel the way you do?”
“Plenty. Lots of talk goes on in the kitchens of farmhouses, but not much gets done.”
Kerian took those words with her as she and Jeratt and Ander left in the morning. They traveled north that day and steered wide of the unwelcoming places where bandits roamed or Knights were known to pass through. That night they made the first camp they’d had out of doors in several weeks, welcoming the starry roof, the embracing fragrance of the forest Kerian took the first watch, and Jeratt sent Ander off to sleep, warning that the last watch would be his. They sat quietly for a while, neither speaking, each listening to the night song. The moon rose, climbing the trees and hanging high above the boughs.
“Tell me what you’re thinkin’, Kerian.”
She glanced at him and nodded. She poked the fire, gathered up her thoughts.
“They’re good folk here in the dales, Jeratt. I’ve spent most of my life in the city.” She stirred the fire and made the flames flare. “In the service of a senator and …” Sparks sailed up to the sky. “And in the confidence of a king. I’ll tell you, Jeratt-the king watches the Knights rule his city, hears how they treat his kingdom.” She shook her head. “If he saw what I’ve seen since autumn, if he heard what I’ve heard-”
“What would he do?”
The scornful sneer, the sudden anger flashing in Jeratt’s eyes irritated Kerian. “He would do anything and everything, if he could. He is a king with no court, the ruler of a Senate that holds all the power-”
“-and hands it over to Thagol.”
“He is powerless, I tell you.” Kerian shook her head, frowning. “As long as he has no army, Gilthas is tied, just like you say, hand and foot, but if he had an army…” She leaned forward. “One no one could say was his, but one he would know is his. If he had a fast-striking army-warriors who weren’t quartered anywhere, who couldn’t be tracked…”
Jeratt’s eyes lighted. “One that ran like ghosts, striking hard and fast and vanishing into the night.”
She smiled. “You sound like you’re ahead of me.”
He nodded. “Long years ago, with the prince, we had such an army. I came up with him from Silvanesti and got kind of good at forest fighting.” He laughed grimly. “Hit those city elves and ran, hit and ran, us and the Kagonesti. Would’ve won, too if it hadn’t been for dragons and bad, bad luck. Would’ve been one kingdom then, a kingdom for all elves.”
Kerian listened to the night, the rising wind that smelled of rain. She looked past Jeratt to Ander, beyond him, south to the dales where farmers still remembered how to greet travelers well and where the people were beginning to resent the mail-fisted Knights. In the wind and the hissing of the fire she heard words from an old woman she hadn’t seen in nearly a year.
Killer!
“I’m thinking,” she said, “that here is where to start.”
Jeratt laughed, startling Ander awake. “You know what to do with them once you flush them out of the dales, the woods, and the hills?”
Again, Kerian’s long, slow smile. “No, I don’t, but you do. Don’t you, Jeratt?”
Chapter Thirteen
“Look! Damn Knights.”
Ander slipped closer to Kerian, his breath warm on her cheek. In his throat, his pulse jumped. Sweat glistened on his cheeks, and in that he was not so different from Kerian or Jeratt. The sun of late summer shone down hot and the canopy of the forest provided shade but did nothing to cool the air. That certainly accounted for some of the sweat. The rest… the boy was coming close to what Jeratt called “first blood,” his first battle. Today, or another day soon, Ander would do his best to kill another.
“First blood,” Jeratt had said to Ander when they began to draw together resolve and make plans. He drew upon the earth, as he liked to do, sketching maps real and imagined, laying out the strategy of the forest-fighter whose best plan is to use the wood for cover, to dart out and kill and dart back again. In this, he found that Ander had a keen mind, a quick wit for understanding and for seeing how such plans worked. Between the two, the half-elf and the boy, growing respect began to replace grudging acceptance.
Though he spoke most often of tactics, most forcefully, Jeratt also spoke to Kerian and Ander, the untried warriors, of risk. “You spill someone else’s, or he spills yours.”
Ander pointed to the road again, a thin winding branch of the broader Qualinost Road. Kerian nodded to let him know she saw what he did. The narrow road ran beside a broad stream. The jingling of bridles and bits hung in the air, two Knights riding side by side. Behind came a heavily laden cart drawn by two mules. An elf drove the cart, man or woman Kerian couldn’t tell from where she crouched. It was as, only the day before, Felan had told them it would be: two Knights and a cart full of swords, battle-axes, and daggers.
“Sometimes it’s that, got from the smithies in this part of the country, made to Thagol’s order to arm his men, here and in the city. Sometimes it’s gold or jewels taken at the border from traders, hill dwarves from down southern ways who take their pay at our border and don’t set a step into the kingdom. Other times, in season, it’s harvest, most of it going to feed the Knights in the capital.” Bitterly, he said, “We keep enough to seed the next year, barely enough to feed ourselves through winter, no more, and nothing to trade for pots and pans, plough shares, and belt buckles. We don’t trade much for wine now, not for cloth, wool, or boots.”
It was beginning to be here as it was in the eastern part of the kingdom-the elves were made to arm and feed their oppressors while they themselves plunged deeper into poverty. Felan, Bayel, and other dalemen bitterly felt this insult. It hadn’t been difficult to convince them to keep an eye out, an ear to the ground, for the purpose of letting Kerian know when a Knights’ cart or wagon would set out on the road to Acris.
“Listen,” Jeratt told her, “and learn, but keep hold of patience, Kerian.”
So Kerian watched patiently as carts and wagons wound the river road. She stopped counting how much tribute was passing and learned to count how many Knights were deployed for a cart, how many for a wagon. She saw that-cart or wagon-the ones most keenly guarded were those bearing weapons. She learned that once on the Qualinost Road, the escort met draconians that saw every load of tribute on to Acris, the crossroads town some miles distant. From there, Felan said, a stronger force of Knights with more draconians escorted small trains of carts and wagons all the way to the capital.
“Acris,” Felan told them, “is where you’ll find Lord Thagol. His Knights are quartered all over in this part of the country, in villages and taverns, but the Lord Knight stays where he is, right in his den and keeping watch over all.”
Felan and Bayel had sworn to find a dozen elves to join them, young men and women who had for more than a year now been chafing under the oppression of the foreign Knights. “We’ll scour the countryside of ‘em,” he’d said. “Drive ‘em right back to Qualinost.”
Kerian refused at once, and Jeratt wholeheartedly agreed.
“That’s your pride talkin’, “ he said. “Not a bad thing, unless it kills you. Ain’t no twelve of you going to send Thagol and his Knights anywhere but to sharpen their swords, but Kerian, me, and Ander, we have a fair bit of experience keepin’ out of trouble. You get to learnin’ that, travelin’ as we do. We got no wives or children, no farms to tend.”
Faran had paled at that, and Bayel stayed silent.
“You let us do what we plan,” Jeratt said gently, “
and just keep an eye open now and then for a bit of news you might think we’d like. Later-” He shrugged. “Later, things could change and then we can talk again.”
Later they might he looking around for good men and women to add to their number.
“Look,” said Ander again. “Damn Knights. They ride through as if they own the place.”
Kenan nodded. Behind her, Jeratt slipped out of the deeper gloom. “Three of them ugly draconians ahead on the Qualinost Road,” he said. “Waitin’.”
Kerian pointed to the Knights. Jeratt grunted. ›
“Tidy little package,” he said.
Ander nodded. “Two Knights and an elf who’ll flee or join in our side.”
“Can’t count on him not siding with the Knights.”
The Knights came closer. Now Kerian heard the deep thud of hoofs on the road, human voices speaking roughly in Common. The cartwheels creaked, the mule snorted and pulled a little at the reins when the wheels hit a rut. The cart’s burden sang, steel chiming faintly against steel.
“A cowardly elf and two Knights,” Ander said stubbornly. “We could take them.” Ander glanced from one to the other, in his eyes an eager light.
“Now easy, boy,” Jeratt said. He glanced past Ander to Kerian. “Listen.”
“For what?”
Jeratt pulled a predator’s grin. “For me to tell you when to go.”
Sunlight and shadow swam on the road. The willows hung so close to the ground their boughs brushed the earth. Horses snorted, a Knight cursed and looked back over his shoulder at the elf and the cart. The driver slapped the reins hard against the mule’s rump, but the cart didn’t move. The mule spread its forelegs and lowered its head.
Ah, Kerian thought, now slap those reins one more time….
Which the elf obligingly did.
The mule brayed, and the crash of hoofs against the front of the cart boomed through the forest. The Knights swore in unison as the elf slapped the reins again.
The mule kicked a second time, then a third. The cart wobbled, and the front of it broke away. The driver jumped free, as the cart crashed onto its side, spilling shining weapons all over the road.
“Now,” said Jeratt, nudging Ander.
The boy leaped up, Jeratt beside him. Two arrows flew, and a heart’s beat later, a third. Someone screamed high; a Knight tumbled from his horse, the horse itself bellowing in pain. Kerian’s arrow had pierced its neck. Jeratt let fly a second arrow, taking down the second Knight. Behind him Kerian shot another. The Knight on the road was trying to stand, two arrows in his thigh. Ander, breaking the plan, let go his own second shaft. It struck nothing, not even the horse writhing and squealing in agony.
Jeratt grabbed him hard, shaking him. “No! Do what I told you!” He shoved him toward the slope. He turned to glare at Kerian, shouting “Go!”
She ran, scrambling down the hill to the road, slipping on old leaves and grass, righting herself every time. Heart slamming hard against her ribs, she bolted for the screaming horse. In one swift motion, she slit its throat. Blood spurted from the severed artery, rising like a crimson fountain, splashing Kerian’s hands, her face. Beside the beast lay its master, the Knight with two arrows in his thigh. Kerian saw his eyes wide and white in the shadows across the road. Helpless, he lifted a hand to the blood-soaked elf woman standing over him, to plead for mercy or to ward off a killing stroke.
“Do it!” Jeratt shouted. “Now!”
Now, or the draconians would hear the commotion and come to investigate.
Kerian gripped the bone handle, and as she did something hit her from behind, a hard weight driving her to the ground. She lost her knife, the dwarf-given weapon flung’ from her hand. A voiced cursed her in Qualinesti as the driver of the cart jammed his knee into her back, crushing air from her lungs. The elf grabbed a handful of her hair.
There was her knife, flashing in the sunlight, across her field of vision, down toward her own throat. Her cry of fear and protest sounded like strangling.
Someone thundered, “No!” and the elf strangling her jerked once, then again.
He toppled, the release of his weight as painful as the weight itself.
Kerian tried to gain her feet and fell back. A hard hand grabbed her and dragged her up. Jeratt’s bearded face came close to hers.
“Go,” he shouted. “One of the horses bolted-they’ll see it on the road. Go!”
Go … where? Strip the Knights of weapons and whatever gear they could use. Sink the tribute into the stream, let the fine steel rust and rot, useless to Thagol or the dragon.
Kerian ran, seeing the elf who’d tried to kill her out of the corner of her eye. He’d died of two arrows in the back, Jeratt’s and Ander’s. From the look of them, they’d struck at the same instant.
Jeratt and Ander sank the tribute, hauling the sacks of weapons to the stream, shoving those blades that had spilled out back among their brethren and letting the weight of steel hold the weapons under the water. While they worked, Kerian took the boots of the Knight with the smallest feet. She grabbed the swords of each and their scabbards and belts. Before her companions had returned, she stripped off the black mail shirts and left the Knights face up and staring at the overhanging willows from dead eyes.
She didn’t stop to give in to the sickness roiling in her belly until she, Jeratt, and Ander had fled the scene of the killing. Then she vomited, quietly, violently in a thicket so far from the road that the sounds of furious draconian discovery never reached her.
* * * * *
“You killed one of us,” Kerian said, the sour taste of bile in her mouth hours later. “You killed that Qualinesti. That’s not what we’re supposed to be doing. We’re supposed to be fighting the Knights and-”
“Just about anyone who’s trying to kill us,” Jeratt drawled, “and that elf was trying to kill you.”
Kerian snorted. “He didn’t know who we were or whether he was in danger-” She shook her head, trying to dispel the memory of the elf’s body flung away by the force of two arrows. “You could have hit him, pulled him off me. You didn’t have to kill him.”
“There wasn’t time!” spat Jerratt.
Silence stood between them, Kerian on one side of the campfire, Jeratt and Ander on the other. They had no hare on a spit over the flames, and no one had gone to catch trout from the nearby stream. Jeratt was eating a hunk of cheese and chewing on a small loaf of hard bread, which they had gotten from Felan’s wife the night before. Chewing, Jeratt jerked his head at Ander, who slipped a hand into the pouch at his belt. Kerian heard the crackle of stiff parchment as Ander unfolded it.
Jeratt jerked his head again, Ander handed the paper across the fire. Little sparks jumped up, Kerian took it quickly.
“Read,” Jeratt said.
She did, her eye leaping along the few short lines of a terse message. It commended the bearer to “the most esteemed Lord Eamutt Thagol of Qualinost and late of Monastery Bone,” and it urged the Lord Knight to reward the bearer according to the measure of his merit.
“Found this on the dead driver,” Jeratt said around the last bite of cheese.
Kenan stared at the message.
“You’re welcome,” Jeratt said dryly.
She looked up, almost absently. “Thank you.”
Ander leaned closer to the fire. “He’d have killed you, Kenan. He was trying to kill you.”
The fire hissed over green wood. “I know the elf was trying to kill me,” she said curtly, then, softer, “I was there.”
Kerian balled up the parchment. “A collaborator! A cowardly collaborator working with the Dark Knights.” She made to throw the balled sheet into the fire-then caught herself in time. She held it a little above the flame, then took it back and smoothed it across her knee.
“What?” said Jeratt, looking from her to the wrinkled page.
Kerian shook her head as she folded the parchment neatly along the original lines. “Nothing. Yet.” She leaned forward. “We need to l
et Felan and Bayel know. Anyone they speak to could be working for Thagol-they’re taking more of a risk than we guessed, helping us.”
Jeratt snorted. “We aren’t going to stay here and make a career out of kicking Thagol.”
Their plan was to make short, sharp strikes in this part of the kingdom then slip away back home, let Thagol puzzle over things here for a while, then take up their campaign against his Knights from Lightning Falls. Jeratt had traveled back there twice, speaking to Elder, speaking with Ayensha, Bueren Rose, and the others.
“Right,” Kerian said, “but they have to live here. I’m talking about setting down roots. Let’s kick Thagol a few more times before we leave. Let him know trouble is brewing.”
Jeratt nodded slowly in agreement, the grudging expression on his face saying he wondered just who was in charge sometimes, him or her.
She slapped her knee and looked around hungrily. “What’s to eat?”
Jeratt laughed. “Used to be cheese and bread. Not much more now than a heel and a rind. Gotta get a better belly, Kerian.” He jerked his chin at Ander. “You too, youngster. You’re gonna see worse than you saw today. You’ll do worse, too. Might as well not do it hungry, eh?”
Too late to hunt, too late to fish, Kerian and Ander went to sleep hungry. It surprised her, waking in the middle of the night to the sound of Jeratt tending the fire, that she could sleep at all. She glanced at Ander and saw him staring at the leafy canopy, eyes wide and nervous. He slid a glance her way. She saw him shudder and reach for the scabbarded sword lying near to his hand. They all had new weapons tins day, looted from corpses. Ander’s fingers didn’t cringe to touch the pommel of a dead Knight’s weapon.
In the morning, without consulting Jeratt, she told Ander to slip quietly through the forest first to Felan’s farm and then Bayel’s. “Tell them we know there was at least one collaborator among the elves here, that there might well be more. Tell them everything we discussed last night, offer them the honest choice-back out now, stay as they have been, or come to fight.”
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