by Wren Handman
Westley smiled and shook his head. “No, no. It’s quite an insult to wear the color of another house. You’re mistaken. Her saddle was brown, it had that lovely woven blanket, I remember because Danielle had one that—”
“Under the blanket!” Taya screamed. “That’s why she was covering it! Dear goddess, the saddle. Why didn’t I say something earlier? Why didn’t I see?” She was up and on her feet, running for the stable, her confused hosts only a few steps behind.
“What in Oblivion do you mean!” Westley demanded.
“The saddle! It was black with gold braid; I saw it when I went inside for some privacy!” she called over her shoulder. “That horse belonged to the king!”
“She came to tell them which pass to take. She redirected all the troops!” Leanne gasped. “Sweet Sephria, she’s leading them right into the ambush they think they’re avoiding.”
“We can’t assume the worst,” Danielle chided, but Westley disagreed.
“We have to assume the worst. It could mean all their lives.”
“We have to warn them,” Leanne said with a gasp. She helped Taya pull open the large stable door, and together they hurried to a stall. There was only one horse, and Taya and Leanne eyed each other, unspoken things passing quickly.
“They have a whole night’s lead, and the pass is only a day’s ride!” Danielle objected. “We’ll never get there in time.”
“They’ll stop for the day. When I was with them we only traveled at night, and we made camp during the day. Besides which, they’re on foot. I can make it,” Taya insisted. She and Leanne got the saddle on the horse.
“You’re not going, I am,” Leanne whispered.
“But they’re so close to their goal—what if they march through?” Westley asked.
“They won’t. They still have injured among them, Darren included. They won’t risk pushing him,” Taya said. The horse was saddled, and Taya walked around it to take Leanne’s hand. “I have to go.”
“I’m a better rider,” Leanne insisted. “What does a city girl know about horses?”
“You’re a city girl,” Taya reminded her, taking the reins.
But Leanne wrapped her fingers around hers, forestalling her. “I’m a rich city girl. And this isn’t your war! This isn’t even your country!”
“Elise would never forgive me if I let you ride into the middle of an ambush,” Taya said. “Everyone I have to lose is in that group. If I die trying to save them, no one will miss me because everyone who might’ve will be dead too.”
“That isn’t true,” Danielle said with a gasp. “I’m sure you have friends back home, and your family! And if nothing else, we would miss you.”
“We would,” Leanne whispered, but Taya could see that she had convinced her.
She would hear no more objections.
She leaned in and embraced Leanne hard, and as she did she whispered in her ear, “Thank you, for the detour.”
Leanne kissed her swiftly and then offered her a hand to launch her onto the saddle, and she managed it, though none-too-gracefully.
“Good luck,” Westley said, and she nodded grimly.
She caught the reins in her hands and kicked the horse’s sides, and it took off at a canter. She felt herself rise slightly out of the saddle and then she crashed back down into it, her teeth smashing against each other. She hadn’t been on a horse since she had finished her lessons when she was nine years old. But she was sure it would come back to her; it couldn’t be that hard.
During the journey with Darren and his company, Taya had been sure that she had discovered the worst possible way to travel. Walking through the woods, moving only at night, being scratched and bitten and tripped, had seemed a living nightmare that could not be worsened. She discovered now that she had been wrong—all that was needed to make it worse was the simple addition of a horse. She jolted up and down against the saddle with a regular beat that she began to dread from second to second. She developed saddle sores in places that she didn’t even know could develop saddle sores, and she pulled several muscles in her arms trying to keep her horse traveling in a straight line. Thankfully it was inclined to follow the road, because the few times that the path split, it took everything she possessed to make the horse go the direction she wanted. One time she was forced to dismount and then drag the horse forward by the reins until it was facing the way she wanted to go. It didn’t appreciate this behavior, and refused to move at all until she kicked it as hard as she could with her heels, and then it took off at a breakneck speed, so she could do nothing but hold on and pray that it would get tired before the road turned again.
Chapter Thirteen
AN HOUR BEFORE SHE REACHED the foothills, she found a deserted camp.
It had been impossible to hide the effect so many men would have on the landscape, but they had done their best to make it look like a much smaller group; hopefully if anyone was following, they would assume the rebels had once more split into companies, and only one or two were traveling this way. But it meant that Taya had missed them, that they were already up and moving for the day. She would have to ride like a hellion if she hoped to catch them before they reached the pass. It might already be too late. She urged the horse into a gallop and prayed that it would run quickly enough, and that she could stay on as it did.
The Opannine mountain range crossed Sephria in an almost straight east-west line, and was so steep it appeared from the distance as a sheer wall of dark gray stone. The pass she was riding toward was visible only as a shadow in its terrible bulk. Taya’s mind was full of blood as she passed the foothills with still no revolutionaries in sight, though now and again she caught signs of their passing: scuffed ground, discarded apple cores, and the like. She dug her heels into the horse’s flanks, murmuring an apology, her hands wrapped so tightly around the reins they were turning red. The opening of the pass stretched before her, and then the walls were closing around her and she could see down the length of the crevice, and before her on the rocks was the rebel force, moving in a clump down the rocky floor. They were still in the portion of the pass where the walls were scalable, where footpaths and rocky outcrops provided plenty of cover, but another ten feet on the walls grew slick and tall. She could see that the paths above their heads led to this bottleneck—that’s where the ambush would be. Archers hidden above them. Ashua, it would be like hitting fish in a barrel.
But for now, they were alive.
“Ambush!” she screamed at the top of her voice, half-raising in her stirrups and then falling again, failing to stay upright.
She saw them pause in their march, the figures in the back turning slightly to face her, several others spreading out as they searched the rocks for a hint of attackers. A single arrow fell. Someone screamed—she couldn’t see who.
Whether the enemy commander had intended it to be so or whether that first archer had given their hand away Taya couldn’t say for sure, but after that it was too late to pretend they weren’t there. The rest of the archers took aim and fired, and the air was choked with a rain of arrows.
One droplet burned through the air beside her and she scrambled down from her mount, knowing the horse was an easy target. Her feet hit the ground and then, horribly, her knees buckled and she collapsed in a pile on the rough, hard stone. She had gone so long with her legs clutched desperately to the sides of her horse that they had fallen asleep, and they refused to obey her. She swore under her breath, drawing herself partially under the protective bulk of the horse, praying that it didn’t panic and trample her. It was take cover or get shot, she figured, so she made the best of a bad situation and covered her head with her arms. There would be no stupid heroics from her this time. There was no point in trying to be the hero when your legs didn’t even work.
She could hear men screaming, the sounds of people falling. She risked a glance around the horse, taking in the scene before ducking back. The rebels had found the paths that the archers had taken and followed them, surprising
them inside their hidey-holes. They were unprepared, having intended to rely on the element of surprise, and most were armed only with knives against the rebel swords. It was quick work, once the rebels reached them, to slaughter the archers, but the toll from that first volley of arrows was high. There were many men lying on the ground. But because they’d had warning, instead of death wounds, many had been hit in arms raised in defense, or legs as people threw themselves sideways. Her small cry had saved many lives.
The fighting was over more quickly than Taya had imagined possible. The rebel forces had taken no prisoners.
Taya pulled herself to her feet, which burned with pins and needles but supported her weight, and looked quickly over the gathering. She was ashamed that she only cared for certain faces, but her selfishness was rewarded. There was Jeremy, bloody sword griped grimly in an equally bloody hand; Darren, standing behind David; Ryan, close by as always. She realized with a pang that she could not see Sarah among those standing, though Liam was searching the ground for someone.
Darren came running to her side, David and Ryan close behind. They had not dropped their guard—one lone archer still hidden among the rocks could put an end to their would-be-king, and all their hopes for righteous revolution. Jeremy was ensuring someone triaged the wounded, and organizing the unwounded into a search party to comb the hills, but his eyes found her, full of gratitude and weight, before he turned away.
“Taya! Are ya hurt? I saw ya fall,” Darren said, catching her by the shoulders.
She shook her head, dreading the news that would pass between them, knowing its inevitability. She had thought she would relish a moment like this, a small victory, but she found the words were stale in her throat before they were even spoken.
“I’m fine. I just fell as I was getting down. I was a sitting duck up there.” She patted the horse’s heaving flank fondly, and it gave a faint snort. It must have been battle-trained—being a baron’s horse she supposed it was used to tourney grounds and the clash of steel on steel—or she was sure the smell of blood would have sent it mad.
“How did you know?” he asked, releasing her shoulders.
“I…” She glanced up at him for a moment, catching the concern in his deep gray eyes, and then quickly looked down at her feet. She couldn’t watch his face as she told him. “I’m sorry, Darren…it…I was in the stable, and I noticed a saddlebag…I didn’t know it at the time, but it was decorated all in gold. Gold and black.”
“A saddle? I don’t understand.”
“There were only two horses in the stable, Darren, and two saddlebags. One the set on the horse you see here. The other…was Nicola’s.”
“What?” He took a step away from her. Violently, he shook his head. “No, that can’t…There’s a mistake. She borrowed a saddlebag! It’s only a color, Taya. It means nothing.”
“If it was a mistake, I would have found no ambush here,” she reminded him gently.
“No,” he whispered, tears welling in his eyes, and then abruptly he spun and moved away, almost running.
Ryan put a hand gently on David’s arm and then took off after Darren, moving silently amidst the gravelly rocks.
“It is a hard blow,” David said quietly. “He will need time.”
Taya nodded, wrapping her arms tightly around herself. “Then we’ll have to give it to him. And meanwhile, the injured need our help. I don’t know much, but if you show me I can help.”
David nodded, putting a large hand very gently on her shoulder.
“I regret the circumstances, Taya, but I’m glad to have you among us once more,” he said solemnly.
“Thank you, David. I’m glad to be here.”
And she was, at first. Later, too, she thanked Ashua that she had found the courage to ride out, not letting herself be left behind in a cottage in the woods. But that afternoon, as her senses filled with blood and the screams of the dying, she regretted that this was now her world. She lost the contents of her stomach so many times that there was soon nothing left to vomit, but each time she gritted her teeth, wiped the sting of tears from her eyes, and returned to the blood-soaked earth. She had never given stitches before, and without an anesthetic it was an agony for surgeon and patient. Her arms were soaked in blood from fingertips to elbows, and many a time she could do nothing but clutch a man’s hand as David worked on his wounds. Of the twenty-six men who had accompanied Darren across the border, five were killed and ten more wounded. Sarah had taken an arrow through the throat—it would have killed her instantly, which was a small comfort. The young red-haired man, barely out of boyhood, who had ventured his story of household prayers died screaming, an arrow in his gut, and Taya held his hand as he shrieked. The sound, near the end, was barely human. As Taya smoothed his damp hair back from his face she felt something within her snap, and she filled the empty space with a rage like nothing she had known before.
“I will kill her. When I see her next, I swear. I will kill her,” she said, her head bowed as if in prayer. A shadow fell across her and she looked up to see the child, Marce, looking down at her. His face was drawn and pale; he seemed almost as lifeless as the young man lying in front of her.
“These thoughts will not grant him peace,” he told her quietly. “Prayer will speed him to his rest.”
“These were not praying men, child of Yariel. These were men who wanted the wrongs of their country to be solved in blood and steel. I think these thoughts are exactly what will grant him peace.”
“I was told you were a praying woman.”
“You want a prayer?” she snarled. “Blessed Ashua, whose tears wash her fallen boy’s face, let me smite his killer down. The next time we meet, let there be blood, and pain, and let me rip the life from her as this boy who died. So bless it so.”
To that, he had nothing to say.
Finally, when Taya tied off a knot and went walking to find her next patient, she found that everyone had been seen to. The injured had been made comfortable, and the healthy were finishing the endless tasks of settling a large group of men. Jeremy had arranged the five fallen revolutionaries under their cloaks, and three men were building a large fire at the edge of the campsite. Jeremy was off to the side, checking on the horses, but as she approached she saw that his hands rested unmoving on a saddle, and his posture was frozen.
“Jeremy?” she asked.
He didn’t turn toward her, and the silence before he spoke was so long she thought he wasn’t going to; when he did, finally, it was husky and strained.
“If I start now,” he said, “I shall never stop.”
It took her a moment to place the words, to remember speaking them herself the night she lost control in his arms. She wanted to wrap him in an embrace as he had done for her, but the stiffness of his shoulders held her back. Finally, she settled for putting one hand, warm and trembling slightly, against the curve of his spine. She could feel the knotted muscles there, and rested her forehead against the back of her hand.
“You’ve taken good care of them,” she said.
“They were safe in Miranov,” he said, still not turning to face her. “They fled Sephria to escape the danger, and I dragged them back to it with grand speeches, with words about nobility and honor.”
“If they had been happy,” she said, “the speeches would never have worked.”
“Because if they had been happy, I would have had no need for speeches.” He sounded like he was trying to convince himself. “And yet…if I had stayed silent…”
“Did you recruit them all?” she asked.
He nodded, and turned finally to face her. His eyes were dry, but haunted. She thought he might feel better if he let himself fall apart, but she knew he didn’t have the luxury. It wasn’t ego that made him feel like everyone was relying on him. They were. “Fanning sparks, turning them to flames—that’s what I do. And the reasons are so noble, and the cause so true. But our blood all looks the same, at the end of the day.”
“Good,” Taya said,
and she reached out and took his hands. “You should never forget the price. While we stake claims and build armies, we should remember. It’s good, Jeremy, that you feel this pain. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be the man I admire.”
He bowed his head, and though his grip was almost painful she didn’t break away. She remembered thinking how safe she had felt with him, and knew how strange it was that she felt that same safety, even now. And understood that it was that, that power and responsibility, that he mourned.
Finally he released his iron grip. Her hands were white from the tension, but she didn’t shake them out.
“I should go find Darren,” he said, running a hand through his hair. She liked that he had a nervous tell. It made him less intimidating.
“You’re in no shape to kick him out of despondency,” she pointed out. “Let me.”
“What would we do without you?” he asked, and the wonder in his voice made her blush. She was glad for the twilight, which hopefully hid it from his searching eyes.
“You would be fine, Jeremy. You are strong enough for us all.”
He was sitting on a high rock, his figure framed in the dying light of the sun. Ryan nodded to her as she approached, and she put a hand gently on his arm.
“David is being a saint. He has saved many lives today,” she told him softly.
Ryan nodded. “He has always been a better man than I,” he said, uncharacteristically open.
“He is a better man than most of us, I think,” Taya said, and then she motioned her head toward Darren. “How is he?”
“Betrayal always digs deep,” Ryan said with a shrug, and Taya nodded.
She moved past him and climbed up the rock, and she felt him sinking back to give the two of them privacy. Taya sat down beside Darren, silently watching the horizon. For a long time they sat there in silence, the only sound the faint noises of the makeshift camp behind them. It was Darren who finally broke the silence, and his voice was husky and choked.
