Blood Ward

by Glynn Stewart

  “I know,” he agreed. “But we shouldn’t be alone right now. Not with the Hunters near.”

  He was armed too. He wasn’t sure how far he’d trust the worn quickshooter now, but his gun belt was on as he surveyed the tucked-away pool with its rocky beach. It was a beautiful spot.

  A much closer splash led him to look at the lake and realize that Lora had swum over and was now floating in the water close to him, watching him.

  That close to the surface, the water did nothing to conceal her nakedness in the moonlight, and Teer swiftly averted his eyes again—which earned him an extended fit of giggles from the floating woman.

  “You’re an odd man, Teer,” she told him. “This place could lend itself to all kinds of things if not for why I’m out here.”

  “Some of our hands were women,” he said. “I figured. Guessing your supplies were on Toss?”

  “With the rest of my clothes,” Lora admitted.

  “I’ve some bandages and such that should work,” Teer said. “Would that help?”

  She sighed.

  “Yes,” she admitted. “You’re good at missin’ the point, I see.”

  Teer looked at her in confusion—before averting his eyes as he remembered she was naked, causing her to laugh again.

  “I’ll need to poke at those clothes,” she told him. “Are you going to keep getting’ darker and lookin’ away if I get out of the water?”

  “Need to keep an eye on the top of the cliffs and the canyon,” Teer said with fake virtuousness, averting his eyes while offering her a hand up from the pool.

  She took his hand and giggled at him again, but there was a nervous edge to it now.

  “Are we in danger?” she asked as she started to actively work the clothes with the soap.

  “Yes,” Teer admitted. “Not much right now, I don’t think. The waterfall covers any noise we make, and we did a good job of messing with our trail this evening. But they shouldn’t have found us in the first place.”

  “We weren’t hidin’ our tracks after you decided to help,” she said. “Maybe we should have, but I figured you were the only ones close enough.”

  “With Star carrying two, we could only make thirty miles a day. Carrying one and riding for a long day, Star could make fifty,” Teer admitted. “Once they had the trail, they were gonna catch up sooner or later.”

  “So, what do we do?” she asked, pulling her blouse out and hanging it over a flat rock—a rock she’d clearly picked because it was in Teer’s line of sight, all but forcing him to see her naked body.

  “More of what we did today,” he said. “They won’t be expecting Kard’s magic. It might buy us our escape.”

  “And they’re probably not expectin’ you to see them and hear them from as far as you did,” she said. She sighed, shaking her head.

  “I’m going to be out here until these dry,” she told him. “Late night for me. Can you grab me those bandages?”

  “I’ll stay with you; got to keep everyone safe,” Teer said. “I’ll grab them, but I also want to check those stab wounds. They should be fine now, but it doesn’t hurt.”

  16

  Despite Teer’s fears, the night passed quietly. They ate a cold breakfast in the dim light of dawn, taking a moment to enjoy the natural beauty of the pool they’d discovered. None of the three of them said anything as they ate and packed.

  “We ride straight north today,” Kard finally said as Teer helped Lora up onto Star. “I’ll cover our trail for the first few candlemarks, but we should be out of these moors by midday.

  “Then we just ride like the wind and hope they’re confused in here for long enough to get us to the Venedor Hills. The Kota are known to patrol there, and no Hunter with a brain is going to tangle with the Kota.”

  “Two more days?” Teer asked.

  “If we get out of these moors quickly enough, we should reach the Venedors tomorrow,” Kard agreed. “Might take another day or two to find the Kota, let alone Tyrus’s tribe, but once we reach the Venedors, we should be safe.”

  “Then let’s ride,” Lora said. “I don’t want you two in trouble for me.”

  “I figure it’s far too late for that,” Kard said with a chuckle. “But we won’t get in trouble with the Unity unless someone has proof, and there’s none of that.”

  This time, Kard fell in behind Star. Once again, his hand was splayed out behind him, and the illusion that made him look Merik faded as his magic wove through the dirt and soil beneath the horse’s hooves.

  The directions he’d given didn’t require a map to follow, and Teer turned Star to the north and urged her up to a trot. The hills around them were surprisingly reassuring. He was used to being able to see for miles, but today the enclosed space shielded him from others’ sight as well.

  His focus was on keeping Star’s hooves out of any dangerous ground and on keeping them on the lowest part of the rise. Cresting a hill while being pursued was something he didn’t need anyone to tell him was dumb.

  “This was always so much more exciting in the books,” Lora admitted softly to him. “The horses don’t tire and no one has a badly timed cycle. Wolfen don’t smell quite so bad in books, either.”

  “I never read much,” Teer confessed. “Working on a law code right now. Slow going.”

  “A law code?” she asked with a giggle. “Guess that makes sense, but yeah. Slow.”

  “I’m out here to help people,” he told her. “Need to know what the Unity laws are—so I know when to turn someone in and when to run.”

  “I don’t figure most Hunters care much beyond the stones,” she said. “You’re an odd one.”

  “So you say, but I’m me,” Teer replied after a moment’s thought. “Can’t be anyone else.”

  “Don’t be,” Lora instructed. “Odd isn’t bad.”

  They turned north around the latest hill and Teer blinked against a sudden lack of shade. The hill after this was barely a rolling bump. They were at the end of the moors.

  “Kard?”

  “I see it,” the El-Spehari told him, riding up to join them and reestablishing his illusion.

  Teer didn’t know how much any given spell drained his companion, but he was learning that the illusion Kard wove to protect himself prevented him from doing any other magic. It also, he understood, concealed Kard’s power from various tools the Spehari had to detect their rogue halfbloods.

  “We ride,” Kard told him. “We can’t push the horses much faster than this, but straight north, my friend. And we hope we bought enough time.”

  Teer grimaced.

  “It’s a race now, then?” he asked.

  “Unless we’re very lucky and we lost them in the moors,” the old soldier told them. “I wouldn’t count on that. So, we ride.”

  For a precious few candlemarks, Teer dared hope that they’d done the unlikely and left their pursuers in the moors. Then one of his irregular checks of the horizon behind him proved the falseness of that hope.

  “They’re behind us,” he shouted forward to Kard. “I make it six riders; they’re right on our trail. How?”

  “Could be a dozen ways,” Kard admitted, pulling Clack up to bring the two horses in line with each other. “We don’t stop till dark,” he decided aloud. “We ride until it isn’t safe for the horses.”

  “Only one moon for most of tonight,” Teer warned. “We won’t have light once the sun goes down.”

  “I know,” Kard conceded.

  “They won’t either,” Lora pointed out. “They can’t ride in the dark either.”

  “But they will gain on us until then, I suspect,” Kard said. “Teer?”

  “They’re moving faster than we are but not much,” he guessed, studying the distant figures. “Three, maybe four miles back. They won’t catch up quickly, but…”

  “I know,” the El-Spehari said grimly. “No tricks left, I’m afraid. We should have gained more time in the moors. Now all we can do is ride.”

  Teer nodded, setti
ng his heels to Star’s flanks and trying to urge a bit more speed from the horse without pushing her too hard.

  “Here, Lora.” He pulled a set of pairglasses from his saddlebags. “Can you see ’em with these?”

  He didn’t think his vision was that good, which meant she’d be able to track their pursuers while he rode.

  “Point for me,” she murmured once she had them out. He did and she nodded grimly. “Yeah, I see ’em.”

  “Watch ’em for me?” Teer asked. “We’ll buy what distance we can.”

  “I’ll tell you as they come,” she said. Her voice broke mid-sentence and he freed an arm for a moment to give her a reassuring hug.

  “We’ll make it,” he told her. “We’ve only fifty miles to go and they’re five miles behind us. We’ll make it.”

  He figured she suspected he was wrong. That was fair. He knew he was wrong.

  The only question was whether they’d be run down before nightfall or the next day.

  17

  Darkness fell with their pursuers still behind them. They’d closed almost half the distance, though they remained far enough that even Teer couldn’t make out much of them.

  “We ride on,” Kard ordered grimly, his voice soft so only Teer and Lora could hear him. “Slowly and carefully, and we watch the ground, but we ride on.”

  Teer grimaced but obeyed, focusing his gaze on the ground in front of Star’s hooves, guiding the horse across the thankfully clear plain as best he could. Even his eyes could only make out so much under the light of a single moon, and the process terrified him.

  They couldn’t have made it much more than a mile before Clack made a sharp whinny and pulled up. Kard made a disgruntled sound as Teer drew Star next to him.

  “Horse might be smarter than we are,” Kard told him.

  “If he’s saying don’t ride on under one moon, he’s smarter than you are, at least,” Teer replied, more harshly than he usually spoke to Kard. “If we hurt the horses, we’re not escaping anyone.”

  Kard grunted, staring at the ground in front of the horse.

  “Snake, I think,” he admitted. “But I can’t see for sure, so Clack’s point is true. As is yours.”

  The tall El-Spehari swung himself down from the horse and offered Lora a hand to dismount from Star.

  “Keep your voices down,” he instructed. “We don’t unpack anything. I’ll take first watch, but we ride before dawn. We gain every moment of time we can.”

  Lora looked between the two men as she helped Teer down.

  “We can’t escape them, can we?” she asked.

  “It’s a gamble,” Kard admitted. “There’s a chance they won’t follow us into the Venedors, and there’s a chance there’s a Kotan patrol outside the hills, close enough to help. But…”

  “I’m sorry I dragged you into this,” she said. “You’re not even gettin’ paid for it.”

  “It’s the right thing to do,” Kard told her before Teer could speak. “You suffered from the magic of my father’s kin. If we handed you to them, you’d suffer again at the anger of one of their favorites. Consider it my own little rebellion, the last rays of Sunset.”

  “Feels like I lured you into a Spehari’s bargain,” she murmured.

  That was how Kard had described his ability to save Teer, too. A “Spehari’s bargain,” named for the deals the Merik nations around the original Spehari landing had made. The Spehari had given them guns and steel and machinery, made them the core people of an empire that expanded over all they knew of Aran…but they were only first-among-slaves, and the Spehari brooked no argument, no resistance.

  There was a reason Teer’s magic, a gift of the Merik, was an unknown, after all. Any Merik magic-user had been killed to eliminate their threat to the Spehari.

  “We knew the costs better than you did,” Teer admitted. “We’ll get you to safety, Lora. For now…rest.”

  “Both of you,” Kard ordered in a whisper. “If we had more moons, I’d ride on. But we don’t, so we wait for dawn.”

  Teer had the last watch, grimly waiting for dawn as he did his best to stretch out the knots sleeping directly on the ground had caused. There was still only a single moon up to provide dim light—though it was a different moon now, with firstmoon having set and thirdmoon having risen.

  Secondmoon was missing tonight and the other two didn’t share portions of night at this time of year. Nights could get darker than this, but not much.

  As the first rays of dawn trickled over the horizon, he woke Kard and Lora. Both woke up quickly and silently. A tenday on the road was already teaching Lora essential habits, though he had been ready to try to keep her quiet if needed.

  “Time?” she asked softly.

  “It’s time,” he agreed. “Come on.”

  They mounted in the dark, slowly beginning to ride north as the night began to slip over to twilight—and Teer looked behind them in the growing light.

  “Pillars preserve us,” he swore.

  Kard and Lora both looked back, and they didn’t need the pairglasses to see their pursuers now. The Hunters had been at least a mile and a half behind them at nightfall and the trio had ridden for a mile more in the dark.

  Teer had expected their pursuers to be at least two miles behind them. Instead, six horsemen were mounting up from a cold camp barely a mile behind them—and Teer could see one of them surveying the horizon with a set of pairglasses and pointing at them.

  “Ride,” Kard snapped. “Curse them all to the nightmare sea and ride!”

  Teer obeyed, putting his heels to Star’s flanks and urging her to a speed he’d rarely asked of the mare before. She answered with a will, unleashing a gallop he’d never seen before. Even with two people on her back, Star lunged for the hills to the north of them.

  Clack joined her, the old warhorse’s head down to protect his eyes under armor he wasn’t wearing. Kard had drawn his repeater, the short-barreled weapon resting across his knees and held with one hand as the old warrior plunged ahead.

  “We could end this now,” he shouted to Teer, gesturing to the hunter on Teer’s saddle. “They can’t match your hunter for range.”

  “We don’t even know who they are,” Teer shouted back, a sick feeling in his stomach at the suggestion. He wasn’t sure Kard was right—at half a mile or more, he doubted even his gifts would land every shot—but he could certainly start killing them well before they could reach them.

  He couldn’t do it. He didn’t have it in him to kill people without warning or reason. Suspicion, even pursuit, wasn’t enough. He simply couldn’t do it.

  But their pursuers were gaining, their own horses picking up the speed, and they were only carrying one rider apiece. Star couldn’t sustain the gallop for more than a few minutes carrying two.

  “This isn’t goin’ to work!” Lora shouted. “If we can’t run, what do we do?”

  For a moment, there was only the sound of the horses running and breathing, pushing themselves to their limits at the urging of their humans, then Kard pulled Clack to one side, slowing the warhorse down.

  Teer joined him, pulling Star alongside as they slowed the horses to a halt.

  “If we can’t run and we’re not going to kill them, then the only thing we can do is talk,” he replied. “Get your guns, both of you. Lora, hold the horse. Teer, with me.”

  All three of them dismounted carefully as the pursuing riders slowed toward them. Teer left the hunter on the horse as he dismounted, making sure to pass Lora her thunderbuss and the pouch with their limited shell supply for the double-barreled gun.

  His cartridge pouch went on his belt, offsetting the weight of the quickshooter, and he met Lora’s gaze. Hopefully, they could talk their way out of this.

  If not, at least they were all armed. No one was taking Lora back to Carlon without a fight, not while Teer was with her.

  18

  The riders spread out as they approached, circling the trio with weapons drawn. They carried a mix of repeaters
and quickshooters, though only one had the cavalry-style short repeater. That weapon’s association with the Sunset Rebellions was a black mark against anyone outside the Unity cavalry.

  Teer kept his gaze on as many of the riders as he could, his hand on his undrawn quickshooter. The moment any of them made a threatening motion, he’d end them—but he wasn’t going to start the firefight.

  Only two of the six wore the traditional gray riding coat of a Hunter, the armored garment Teer and Kard had pulled from their horses despite the heat. It wasn’t overly comfortable, but Teer would rather sweat than bleed.

  Finally, one of the gray-coated two rode up in front of Kard and dismounted from his horse with practiced ease. He was a tall Shiggan man, rare in the West as the pale people of the southern coasts of the Unity were still a new conquest.

  Pale by Merik standards, at least. The stranger was still darker than Kard’s true mixed-race skin, with short knife-cut black hair and gleaming blue eyes in his grinning earth-toned face.

  “Kard,” he greeted the older Hunter. “You seems to have gone a little bit off-track delivering this bounty. Do you needs a hand getting her back to a wardtown?”

  “Yosan.” Kard bit the name off like a curse, the two men stepping forward to face each other from about ten feet apart. “I think I have this well under control. All of this”—he gestured at the riders—“is rather unnecessary, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t, as it passes,” Yosan replied cheerily. “Three Horses Inn staff were kind enough to lends me some bits of Miss Lora’s hair. Amazing what that does withs some of our masters’ toys.”

  The Shiggan man tapped what looked like a compass case on his hip. If he’d been using some kind of Spehari redcrystal magic to follow Lora, it was no wonder that their attempt to lose him in the moors hadn’t worked. He’d always known the direction to them.

  “She’s still my bounty,” Kard replied. “You tracking her with a blood compass doesn’t change that.”