“Rogues make us look bad,” Iriseyes, their female leader, told Dom, Qasim, and Kel one night as they gnawed stale flatbread. “Enough twoleggers call us animals as is, without this crowd making it worse. We told Graystreak he ought to cull Maresgift, Jealousani, Edkedy, and their crowd, but he wouldn’t do it. I suppose it’s hard to cull your own brother.”
“Cull?” Dom asked.
“Kill ’em,” Iriseyes said. “Herdmasters like Graystreak can do it. You don’t want bad blood in the herd, particularly not in the slaves. It ruins the slaves, so you have to get rid of them, too. That’s probably what Graystreak’s doing now, culling the slaves that bred with that crowd.”
Kel got up abruptly and walked away. Killing horses because they’d been mounted by wicked centaurs was obscene, she thought, hands shaking as she washed her dishes. It was as obscene as babies’ being shot as their families ran from danger.
That was the eleventh night. The next morning the party with fresh supplies found them. Clean garments and insect repellant gave everyone, including Kel, a more cheerful outlook. She could even talk to the centaurs, though she had to banish the word “cull” from her mind when she did.
On their fifteenth night they got a piece of luck: Osbern’s squad picked up Macorm, a Haresfield renegade. The young man was filthy and afraid. A bite on his arm was infected. He was bound hand and foot, wounded arm or no. Osbern told Raoul it was to protect Macorm as much as hold him: Osbern’s men had not liked what they saw in Haresfield. They knew Macorm had been one of the two who had opened the gate.
“It wasn’t what I imagined, my lord,” the prisoner told Raoul. “There was no feasting or pretty girls or wine. Just take and run, and run. Gavan likes it, but he likes killing, too.” A tear ran down his face, drawing a clean track in the dirt. “All I did was ask to go home. I swore I’d never tell, but they didn’t believe me. They said they’d cull me at sunset for the Mares with Bloody Teeth—”
“Our goddesses of vengeance,” explained Iriseyes. She and two other centaurs were listening to Macorm’s tale.
“They said they’d eat my heart. I believed them. They tied me up, but I got away.” More tears followed the first.
“We’ll just shackle you, then,” Raoul said. “To keep you from repeating the experiment.”
“I know where they’re bound next,” Macorm told him, desperate. “They thought I ran straight off, but I went up a tree. They never thought I’d stay close, let alone right on top of them, and I hid my scent with pine sap. I heard them talking after the searchers went out. For the king’s mercy I’ll tell you what they said.”
“If we catch them, we’ll speak to the king,” Raoul said after a moment’s thought. “If you lie—if it’s a trap—”
“Gods, no!” Macorm began to weep in earnest.
Raoul and Flyndan traded looks. Flyn raised his brows; Lord Raoul nodded. “Time to call the Riders in,” Flyn said with a thin smile. “Buri would never forgive us for leaving her out of the party.”
“I’d never forgive myself if she were left out,” Raoul told his second. “Kel, get Noack up here with his tools,” Raoul told her. “I want shackles on this lad. If you’re good, we’ll feed you,” he told Macorm. To Kel he added, “We’ll need Emmet of Fenrigh.” He’d named one of the men with a healing Gift. “He’s out of—”
“Aiden’s squad,” Kel said.
Raoul grinned. “You learn fast. Under thankless conditions, I might add. Off you go.”
She went to find the men he’d requested.
The Rider Group under Commander Buri came just after sunset; the second Group arrived soon after. Maps were produced, laid flat, and anchored by stones and cups of steaming tea. Kel was kept busy pouring tea and bringing food for the hungry Rider leaders. She even served Macorm, chained to the tent pole for this conversation. Raoul had asked her to do it, though what she wanted to do was take him to Haresfield and rub his nose in the streets filled with the dead, like a bad puppy. Two things stopped her: she was on duty, which meant keeping her feelings to herself, and she knew that Haresfield had surely finished burying the dead by now.
From what she had overheard, a village called Owlshollow was to be the next target. A human bandit had heard the son of that village’s biggest fur merchant, apprenticed to a tanner in another town, talking drunkenly. The son complained that the old man wouldn’t die and let his son inherit while he was young enough to enjoy it. He was too miserly to buy a horse for his heir to ride. He mistrusted fast-talking Corus goldsmiths and their banks, and hoarded the coin he took from each year’s fur harvest. Probably his cronies did the same: they all lived as meanly as they could and whined about the foolish young.
That was enough for Maresgift’s bandits. They would descend on Owlshollow and clean it out. If necessary, they would torture the fur merchants into revealing where they’d hidden their gold.
Macorm was taken away under guard after he finished. Once he was out of earshot, the blond, blue-eyed Evin Larse, in command of the second Rider Group, produced a crystal from his sleeve. It glowed a bright, steady gold. “It would have turned black if he’d lied outright, gray if he’d lied even a bit.”
“You’re sure it works?” Flyn asked. “I don’t trust bought magic. I like to see it worked right in front of me.”
“It works,” said Larse. “It ought to. I paid enough.”
“We did reimburse you,” Buri pointed out.
“Half,” retorted Evin. “At the rate I use it for the Riders, they ought to pay me double.”
“He only bought it to find out if the ladies he courts have husbands,” Buri’s second in command put in.
There was a chuckle from the people in the circle around the maps. The air emptied of the tension that had filled it while Macorm was still present.
“Here’s their last known position.” Buri marked the place on the map with a blunt brown finger. “If they’re bound for Owlshollow, traveling at . . .”
The hunters broke into a flurry of talk, figuring the bandits’ speed based on what was known. Suddenly the mud-streaked, hollow-eyed, grim blood-hounds had become a lively group of humans and immortals again. The end of their chase was in view.
They calculated the robbers’ present location, leaving a margin for error. Raoul sent Kel for a large leather tube packed with his things. When she brought it, he pulled off the cap on one end and slid out a heavy roll of sheets. He looked through them, checking marks on the corners until he found the one he sought, then drew out the sheet and opened it on their worktable. It showed part of the Royal Forest, the district that contained Owlshollow.
Reaching into his shirt, Raoul produced a gold key on a chain and pulled it over his head. Using the key, he drew a circle around the dot labeled Owlshollow. It included the bandits’ last known location. When he closed the circle, the map vanished. They were looking down at real terrain, forested hills, streams and rivers, marshes. Owlshollow appeared as a small town at the junction of two roads and a river. It was situated on rocky bluffs, protected on two sides from raiders who came by water.
“Show-off,” murmured Buri. “Bought magic still isn’t as good as what you do yourself.”
“As if you did any,” retorted Raoul.
Iriseyes ran her fingertip from the bandits’ last known camp, where Macorm had left them, to Owlshollow. “Well, well,” the centaur said, showing teeth in a predator’s grin. “Look at this.”
“The river blocks them outside the town,” said Flyn.
“Marsh blocks the southern escapes,” Buri said, her eyes glittering. “The stone ridge boxes them in on the north.”
“I know this town,” Volorin said. He wore his dark hair long and braided, with ivory beads carved like skulls at the ends of the braids. “No one can get through the marsh, and that ridge is a hard climb, not easy for centaurs. If we spread out in an arc . . .” He sketched the arc on the map with his finger.
“We’ll have them,” said Evin Larse.
“We split up,” said Raoul. “Our hunter force takes position at Owlshollow, where they’ll seal off the river escape routes. The rest of us will form a crescent of hounds, and drive our playmates to the hunters.” He looked around at the others; all were nodding.
The Rider Groups, the centaurs, and half of Third Company were given places along the crescent. Raoul would command the fifty men of the Own in the field. Flyndan and the rest of Third Company would make a fast ride at dawn, slipping far around the bandits to reach Owlshollow. The robbers would never realize the trap was set until it closed.
As everyone prepared to go, Raoul said, “Kel, you’ll report to Captain Flyndan and his sergeants.”
Kel and Flyn stared at him. Flyn protested, “She’s your squire, my lord—”
Raoul shook his head. “I want her with you.”
One of the first lessons pages learned was never to question a knight-master’s command. One pleading look was all Kel allowed herself before she began to clean off the table. By the time she was done, everyone had gone to their beds. She went in search of hers.
Raoul crouched between his tent and Kel’s, giving Jump a thorough scratch. “Walk with me,” he told her, rising to his feet. They strolled across the large clearing that held their camp.
Raoul finally stopped to lean against a massive oak. “You want to know why I’m sending you with Flyn.”
“Sir, I’m to obey without question,” Kel pointed out, though she did want to know.
“That’s fine if you’re to be a lone knight—you have to figure out things yourself,” he said quietly. “But if you get extra duties someday—like command—you should know why you’re asked to do some things, particularly those that aren’t part of regular training.
“Putting you with Flyn at Owlshollow accomplishes two goals,” he explained. “You’ll deal with his not liking you. He’ll probably give you scut work. You need to show you’ll do your part no matter what. Plenty of nobles won’t take orders from a commoner, and they balk when there’s no potential for glory. You need to show that you’ll do what’s needed, not just for me, but for others. And I’ll see how Flyn manages you, if you change his thinking at all. I know you want to be among the hounds, but trust me, this is important.”
Kel nodded. She understood his reasoning, though she hated the assignment. And she still couldn’t argue, because proper squires didn’t.
Raoul clasped her shoulder lightly and let go. “There will be other chases,” he said. “Now get some sleep.”
Owlshollow was larger than Haresfield, and better fortified, with a double stockade wall to shield it. Late that first morning within the walls Flyn called a meeting with the men of the Own and the town’s officials. The squads would wear farmers’ clothes over their mail and work in the fields, so anyone who scouted would think all was normal. Flyn gave each squad a position, then looked at the townsmen. “Did we forget anything?” he asked. “Any side trail, any hole that might let a few escape?”
The chief herdsman was in a whispered argument with the son who had accompanied him. Finally he sighed and looked at Flyn. “My son Bernin reminds me of the old game track, b’tween the bluffs an’ the marsh. It’s overgrown—I don’t know how bandits from outside would know of ’t, or see ’t to escape.”
“If I’ve learned nothing else in my years of service, master herdsman, it’s that the unexpected always happens,” replied Flyn. “I would hate for even a single louse to escape.” He looked around until his eyes found Kel. “Have your son show this track to Squire Keladry. That will be her post when things warm up.”
Kel left with the shepherd lad Bernin, swallowing disappointment again. She’d hoped that Flyndan would relent and let her take part in the main fight. There’s a waste of hope, she thought bitterly.
As Bernin led her through the gates, he kept peering at her. Finally, as they trudged around the outermost wall, he asked, “I’n’t Keladry a girl’s name?”
Bernin was right. The trail was clearly still used, by animals if not people. Someone desperate could take it to reach the river. A bridge two hundred yards downstream would provide a clean getaway if a fugitive got that far.
She wasn’t sure she could hold it alone, so she asked Captain Flyndan to look. He had done so, then told Kel, “Just be ready to take anyone who actually makes it here. I doubt they will.”
They waited for the rest of that day and through the next. Word finally came that Maresgift’s band had camped just a few hours’ ride from Owlshollow. Raoul’s hound forces in the forest would start their push at dawn. Maresgift would have two choices: to stand and fight, or to run for Owlshollow—and Flyndan.
The next morning the raiders came. Lonely at her post on the bluff, Kel heard the battle chorus: horn calls, yells, the clang of metal, the scream of horses. It would be a desperate fight in the fields. The bandits knew that capture meant hanging.
It was maddening to guess how it was going from sounds blown to her through the tangled briars that hid the trailhead above. She stood on a broad ledge halfway between the town and the River Bonnett. It was reachable only by the track down from the heights or up from the river. Here she had flat dirt and room to fight. The river’s edge was all tumbled stones, where it would be too easy to break an ankle.
Kel got a coil of thin, strong rope and took it down the trail from the top of the bluff. Using spikes to anchor it, she stretched the rope at knee height across the trail, six feet above her guard post. It would bring any fugitives tumbling onto the ledge, where she would be ready for them.
She kept her fidgets to the occasional walk to the edge of her post, where she could look at the swift, cold Bonnett thirty feet below. When she caught herself at it, she felt sheepish. You act like the edge is going to creep up on you till you fall, she told herself sternly. Now stop it!
The morning she had climbed down the frail, rusted outer stair on Balor’s Needle had marked the end of her fear of heights, though she still disliked them. Looking at the Bonnett from her ledge was like wiggling a loose tooth with her tongue—it was silly, but she had to remind herself that she would no longer freeze in panic at the sight of a drop. She also wanted to be sure her body would remember that a cliff lay only ten feet behind her.
The battle sounds grew louder. She smelled smoke: had the bandits set the fields on fire? If she climbed to the top, she might see. Her orders were to keep quiet and mind her post. She ought to be like Jump. He crouched at her feet with the patience of the born hunter, ready for game to be flushed. The sparrows were among the briars above, preening, sunning, and doing whatever birds did when bored.
Suddenly they zipped down the bluffs past Kel, screeching the alarm. Gravel rattled down ahead of whoever was on the trail. Kel settled her hold on her glaive and checked her stance. She heard scrambling feet . . .
Was that a child crying?
Someone shrieked. Stones flew as the fugitive hit Kel’s rope hard enough to rip it from its anchors. A centaur skidded onto the ledge half on his side, tangled in her rope, brandishing a short, heavy cutlass.
Kel, hidden by a large boulder where the trail met her ledge, lunged into the open, driving her glaive down. She halted her thrust a bare inch from a squalling girl tied to the centaur’s back by crossed lengths of rope. A cool part of her mind noted that this was why no one had shot the centaur: they had feared to kill the child.
The centaur hacked at Kel with his cutlass as he wallowed, fighting to get to his feet. Kel’s moment of panic—had she cut the girl?—ended. She jerked away from the sweep of the enemy’s blade and cut the rope that held the child. “Jump!” she yelled. The dog leaped over the fallen immortal, seized the child’s gown in his powerful jaws, and dragged her free.
“Get her out of here!” Kel ordered him. The centaur heaved himself to his feet and backed against the stone, cursing breathlessly. She ignored what he said: she had one eye on Jump, who towed the shrieking child back up the path, and one eye on the centaur’s blade.
&nbs
p; The immortal sidled, trying to find room for his hindquarters as he fumbled to yank a saddlebag over his head. He tossed it to one side, out of the way. Its contents thrashed and squealed like a large, frightened animal.
The centaur chopped at Kel, trying to draw her away from the opening where the trail continued down to the river. Kel blocked his cutlass, keeping herself between him and escape. There was nowhere for him to go on her right, unless he were mad enough to try that thirty-foot leap to the foaming, rock-studded river. If he ran that way, she half-thought she’d let him go. It would be a quicker end than hanging.
The centaur groped at a heavy leather belt around his waist with his free hand. He yanked out a throwing-axe.
My luck, thought Kel. He comes the way no one’s supposed to come, and he can use weapons in both hands.
He hurled the axe. Kel dodged left, still between him and escape, and stepped in with a long slash across his middle. He blocked it with his cutlass and hacked down at Kel’s head. She caught the blade on her weapon’s hard teak staff, angled the glaive, and rammed the iron-shod butt straight into the spot where the creature’s human and horse parts joined.
The centaur went dead white, uttering a gasping whine. His eyes rolled back in his head. Kel swung the glaive’s blade around, placing it where the centaur’s jaw met his neck. She pressed until a drop of blood ran down the razor edge.
“Yield for the Crown’s mercy,” she ordered.
Even as he snarled a reply the centaur kicked out with his forelegs, ramming Kel back. Her right side was on fire; her left thigh hurt so fiercely she thought she might faint. Instead she clung to her glaive and staggered to her feet.
The immortal charged, cutlass raised, and nearly speared himself on Kel’s blade. Kel silently thanked the Yamani armsmistress who had bruised her all over to teach her one simple rule: never drop the weapon.
Pain made her weak—she tried to ignore it. Her main attention, her serious attention, was on the foe.
He spun and kicked, his back hooves showering her with rock and dust. Kel shut her eyes just in time. She whipped her glaive in a sideways figure-eight cut to keep him back until she could see. Warm blood trickled down her cheek where a stone had cut her. The sparrows shrieked. Kel knew they were at the centaur’s face. Terrified he might kill them, she opened her eyes. The creature roared his fury, shielding his face against the birds, forgetting his cutlass as he spun, wildly hunting for an escape route.
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