by Tanya Huff
Tomas’ eyes were very dark and his skin very pale, as though he only went out into the sun in fur, giving it no chance to darken. After a long moment, he unfolded his arms and pointed. “The Imperial camp is there. The quickest way to the border is that way, due south. We were moving toward it last night before I left you to find shelter, following the trail the five of you made yesterday. Hopefully, they won’t notice where we left it, and they’ll think you’re still heading home. It’s the sensible thing to do.”
“Are you a Soothsayer?”
“No, I’m sensible.”
“That way…” He turned and pointed past the rock. “…to the northeast, the way your Imperials were taking you, a Pyrahn logging trail goes nearly all the way to the border.”
About to ask how he knew, Mirian bit the question off. He was Hunt Pack. Hunt Pack patrolled the borders. And they weren’t her Imperials.
“The Teryn Valley juts out of Aydori into Pyrahn. It’s one of the few places there’s no natural demarcation. The entire valley used to be part of Aydori, but about a hundred years ago when they straightened the border in return for building up the road into Bercarit, well, Ryder says…said…” He stopped. Swallowed. Continued. “You could get a coach down the trail if you needed to. It has to be where they’re taking the Mage-pack. We’ll stop them there.”
“Just like that?”
“Or we could argue some more until your Imperials show up and shoot us both,” he said, and changed.
She could finally stop looking at his face. “They’re not my Imperials.”
* * *
“She’s definitely heading back toward the border, Cap.” Chard pointed down the trail the girl had left the night before; crushed undergrowth, broken branches, the occasional bootprint, all obvious in the dim gray light of dawn. “She’s heading right back the way we came. How could she find that in the dark?”
Reiter glanced past Chard to Armin, yawning but finally awake. One hand holding the net, the other his musket, he didn’t have a hand to spare to close around the lock of hair in his pocket. “She’s a mage.”
“Can she see in the dark, Cap? Because if she can…” Chard shrugged. “If she kept moving all night, we’ll never catch her.”
“She was exhausted,” Reiter reminded him. “She wasn’t faking that.”
“And me and the captain heard her crashing through the brush,” Best added. “Then we didn’t. She went to ground.” He stopped and waved a hand.
If she hadn’t been a mage, if they’d had more than one tangle or any other guaranteed way to subdue her, he’d have already sent Best on ahead with it, full speed along the back trail to the border while the rest of them spread out and searched more slowly. But she was a mage, and they had only one tangle.
And it was broken. Reiter had no idea if it was functional. Or if it ever was. He did, however, have a very good idea of what would happen if they just let her walk away.
They were soldiers. The Imperial army had trained them to shoot and march and follow orders and give orders and kill and die, but it hadn’t trained them to track a single woman through the empty lands buffering the border between Pyrahn and Aydori. They’d been lucky finding her yesterday and they’d only managed it because they’d known if she was heading for the border, the river limited the possibilities.
She had to be going back to the border today.
Back home.
Back to safety.
If they didn’t find her asleep behind a fallen tree or hiding in a hollow, they’d catch her at the border. Her mother had told them the mage was looking for her beastman. If the black creature was a beastman, he wasn’t hers or they’d all be dead—their lives the best argument he hadn’t been a beastman at all. She had to still be looking for hers, heading back across the border and toward the battle.
Where else could she go?
Best to his left, Armin, then Chard to his right; he thought they’d covered the ground he and Best had covered last night, but nothing looked the same as it had in the darkness and the four pairs of boots—five pairs, he amended silently—had made enough of a mess he couldn’t tell for certain if the girl had gone back over it in the other direction.
“Cap, if we see the dog…”
“Best, if you see the dog, shoot it.”
“Yes, sir.” Best didn’t sound happy as much as justified.
“But, Cap…”
“Shut up, Chard.”
The emperor expected six mages. Reiter had his orders.
He wished he’d asked her for her name.
* * *
“The emperor knew you’d be returning with women.” Six women. Six pregnant women given the Soothsayer’s rhyme, but Danika had no intention of letting Lieutenant Geurin know she’d overheard that. “The emperor is married, I’m sure he knows that women take longer to perform certain tasks than men. Especially if their hands are tied. And they have an audience.”
The lieutenant leaned toward her and smiled. “I don’t care if you piss yourselves. My orders are to get you to Karis alive; they say nothing about how you’re to smell.” He pulled out a pocket watch and made a show of snapping open the ornate case. “You have three minutes. I suggest you stop wasting time.”
Danika had never wanted to throw up on someone so badly in her entire life, but, this morning, her stomach had settled.
* * *
Tomas could move faster without her. Why hadn’t he said that? Without her, the odds of him reaching the border before they piled Danika and the others onto coaches were considerably higher. He could avoid people—not that there’d ever been many people in the borderlands—and even if he were seen, any Pyrahnian who lived this close to Aydori knew better than to take potshots at something that could be Pack. Or their neighbor’s dog. He’d never been able to decide if the big dogs they preferred in this part of the duchy were intended as flattery or protection, nor had he ever much cared.
Harry, who’d actually taken the time to read Mind and Matter, a book by a popular Traiton doctor making the rounds of Aydori drawing rooms and lending libraries, said it was a subconscious way of dealing with the Pack. See, we leash things that look like you here. Tomas had almost believed Harry’d taken that bullshit seriously, then he’d burst into laughter and…
Died. Harry had died.
He wanted to run full out. Away from the place where Harry and Ryder and so many others had been killed. Run to a place where he could make a difference. The odds of anyone shooting him while he ran were slim to unlikely and it was less unlikely the Imperials searching for Mirian Maylin…Mirian. “A little respect, Tomas.” His mother’s voice in memory. “You do not refer to an unmarried woman you are not related to by her first name without her permission.” It was unlikely the Imperials searching for Miss Maylin were following. Anyone with half a functioning brain would assume she’d head back to the border instead of heading off to help rescue five people she didn’t know with only first level mage-craft to call on. Of course they didn’t know she had only first level mage-craft. They thought she was one of the mages they’d been sent to capture, thought she was Mage-pack, which was a stupid case of mistaken identity since they couldn’t catch her scent in a bucket.
Maybe the artifact had chosen her.
Behind him, she made a frustrated noise, almost a Pack noise, and he turned to see her trudging around the root fan of a downed cedar he’d jumped without thinking. He looped back beside her, then almost immediately pulled out in front again. She wasn’t talking, he’d give her that, saving her breath for the scramble through low scrub and around the occasional weed tree.
Crap cover for someone on two legs. There was, after all, no guarantee the Imperials had half a functioning brain between them.
Why hadn’t he told her he could move faster without her?
Tomas had no idea.
The breeze shifted, and he fought the urge to turn and twine between her legs.
When they reached a small, fast moving creek, he be
nt his head to drink, stomach growling. The bits of dried meat he’d been fed at the Imperials’ camp had been all he’d eaten since before they left Bercarit and it hadn’t been nearly enough. He was always hungry these days, even when he was home and eating regularly. When the Hunt Pack was out with the 1st, he’d haunted the field kitchen.
Harry laughed about it.
Used to laugh about it.
His stomach growled again.
No, not his stomach.
He turned to see Miss Maylin kneeling by the creek, scooping water in her cupped hands but breathing too heavily to drink. Stepping away from the shore, he changed. “We can’t stop for food.”
She glanced up at him with those strange, pale eyes, face shiny with sweat. “I didn’t ask to.”
He’d never spent much time with non-mages. It was weird to look at her and see a total lack of mage marks. She’d said her father was a banker. That meant money, didn’t it? Had she ever sweated before? Had she ever been hungry? “I just…I heard…” Three long strides moved him upwind and he breathed easier, not having to constantly try and suppress his physical reaction. “When we get there, to where Danika and the others are, I’ll still be facing Imperials armed with silver.”
Hair falling in a tangled mess over her face, she managed to suck up two handfuls of water before answering. “I know.”
“It’s just that’s why you didn’t want to kill the four who’d taken you, because of the silver and how you couldn’t get away without me…” He couldn’t seem to stop talking. “…but now, I’ll be facing even more Imperials armed with silver, and you still won’t be able to get away without me.”
She shrugged. “Now, the risk is worth it.”
Two could play that game. He shrugged as well, then realized she couldn’t see him. “Long odds,” he growled, annoyed at her disinterest.
Sitting up on her heels, she wiped her hands on her skirt and dropped her head, looking over at him from under the tangle of her hair. “Not if we work together. You draw the attention of the soldiers while I get the net off even one of the Mage-pack. Even odds.”
“They’re Mage-pack.” Tomas showed teeth. He could see she knew it wasn’t a smile. She knew that much at least. “Better than even odds.” Because she didn’t tell him how to draw the attention of the soldiers, he didn’t ask how she intended to get the net off one of the Mage-pack. He’d pulled hers off easily enough and the Mage-pack had a lot less hair. “Can you run?”
Pushing herself up onto her feet, she squared her shoulders. “For a while, I think. Are you sure you know where you’re going?”
“Yes.” If he kept the pull of the border on his right and headed northeast, they had to cross the logging trail.
He thought she might demand an explanation, but she only nodded and said, “All right, lead.”
He waited until she got across the creek before he began to run. Run slowly. Jog really. Still, it was faster than they’d been moving.
He’d be able to move a lot faster without her, but she was right. The two of them together raised the odds. Her scent had nothing to do with it.
* * *
Her feet hurt. Her legs hurt. The cold water had eased her throat but made her stomach hurt. She ran, she walked, she ran again, swallowing the taste of iron.
Tired and hungry and just as pigheaded as her mother had called her, Mirian was not going to quit.
Together, they had a chance.
On his own, Tomas Hagen would be one more body sprawled on the road.
* * *
“I heard that mages can talk to animals. And make trees walk.” Although he spoke quietly, Chard sounded excited by the thought of talking animals and walking trees.
“Why?” Armin sounded confused.
“Why what?”
“Why would they make trees walk?”
“I don’t know about every mage, but our mage, if she could make them walk, she could make them walk out of her way. Make the path easier for her. Or she could move them to hide her tracks as she left the path and headed to a secret mage hideout!”
That, Reiter admitted silently, would be a useful skill. Chard’s secret mage hideout was a figment of the soldier’s overactive imagination, but they hadn’t found their mage beside the trail and they hadn’t caught up on the way back to the border. He stood by the river, by the discarded wagons the Imperial army had emptied of gravel to stabilize the ford, and stared into Aydori.
“Where to now, Captain? Do we rejoin the lieutenant?”
“No.” He spoke without thinking and then had to find words beyond his belief that the lieutenant was an officious little shit. “You heard her mother…”
“She gone to Jaspyr Hagen! He come rip you throat!”
“…she’s looking for her beastman. He’ll be in the battle.”
“With luck, he’s dead.” Best spat to one side. “One less abomination.”
“Do they only have one?” Chard wondered, reaching between the buttons on his tunic to scratch. “Because my Nan has three little yappy things and I heard Lieutenant Geurin say he had a pack of hunting dogs, so maybe the women in Aydori have whole packs of beasts to service them.”
“It doesn’t work like that,” Reiter growled, his tone reminding them that he was a captain and they weren’t, so they’d better not ask him how he knew because all he could tell them was she hadn’t seemed like the kind of girl who had a pack of beasts to service her. And he couldn’t tell them that.
“If I had a pack of girl beasts…”
“Chard.”
Proving he wasn’t entirely stupid, Chard shut up.
There’d be a command post at the bridge. Staff officers. Swords, not Shields. Who’d ask what he was doing there if he was under orders and if he believed the girl those orders told him to capture had headed for the battle. The leadership of the Imperial army was, among other things, predictable.
He pulled his boots from the mud churned up by hundreds of similar boots, felt them slipping off his heels as the mud pulled back, and stepped into the river. “Come on.”
“What if we got in front of her, Captain? Passed her without seeing her?” Unlike Chard’s casual idiocy or Best’s religious fundamentalism, Armin asked questions weighted only by the facts as he knew them. “What if she’s just not here yet?”
“Yeah, but if we’re in front of her,” Chard snorted, “why isn’t she using her magic to pick us off, one by one?”
“Because she’s a lady?”
“She lies down with beasts!” Best snarled.
“Well, yeah, but…”
Reiter reached the other bank and turned in time to see Armin’s frown. Well, yeah, but indeed. They could only act on the information they had, and the mages of Aydori lay with beasts. They didn’t even deny it. “What if she changed into a bird and flew away?” he muttered.
Chard smiled up at him. “It’d have to be an owl, Cap. It was dark. Or a nightingale. Oh, or she could have waited until morning and slipped into that flock of starlings.”
“Can they do that?” Armin wondered, stepping up out of the river onto a rock and avoiding the mud.
“No.” Best seemed positive.
“But they’re mages,” Chard protested.
“Mages can’t change shape.”
“The beastmen change shape.”
“Mages aren’t beastmen.”
“But they lie down with beasts? Right? Maybe they catch the changing thing from them.”
Reiter ignored the rest of the argument. If she was heading for the battle, they’d head for the battle. If they found her searching for her beastman among the bodies, good. If the tangle still worked, it would take her down again. If she’d broken it, he had no way to capture a mage and there’d be ranking officers on the battlefield who understood a soldier couldn’t put his faith in ancient artifacts. He’d happily dump the whole mess in their laps and walk away from the problem entirely.
* * *
Danika couldn’t feel the border
like Ryder could, like their baby would be able to if it was Pack, but she knew exactly where she was when she saw the wound cut into the forest, the stumps radiating out from the logging trail. Straightening the border between the Duchy of Pyrahn and Aydori had given the duke access to the timber of the Teryn Valley. The empire had a need for timber, and the duke had been happy to supply it at a price. She bit back a laugh that threatened to tumble over into hysteria. It seemed like the empire would be getting its own timber from here on.
Kirstin made a noise at the sight of the three mail coaches, a choked-off cry that brought a laugh from one of the men beside her.
“Well, that’s it for your beastmen, then,” Murphy smirked. “Thank fuck they can’t cross the border. Everyone knows that,” he added when Danika turned toward him. “It is true, right? They can’t cross the border?”
“Why would she tell you?” Tagget muttered as the lieutenant strutted forward to meet the drivers and Sergeant Black corralled them in a lose semicircle of soldiers.
The horses were larger than the mountain ponies used in Aydori, but still sturdier looking than Danika had expected given that the speed of the mail coaches crossing the ever-expanding Kresentian Empire held the conquered pieces together as much as the army did. The newspapers Ryder had brought into Aydori in monthly bundles praised the growing network of roads and posting houses that delivered news and laws and letters from sons and daughters who’d been drafted into supporting the empire’s massive infrastructure. Of course, that same network had taken those sons and daughters away in the first place, but even allowing for Imperial propaganda, the citizenry seemed to approve of being connected.
“Leopald may be a dangerous egomaniac,” Ryder had declared, “but he’s not stupid. He has a lot of disparate peoples to govern and conformity will wipe out rebellion faster than force.” Dropping the folded paper onto a lopsided pile, he’d snorted and added, “Not that he isn’t willing to apply force.”
