Tel was frowning. “Makes no sense. They should be consolidating their gains before they move on.”
“The main force is still to the south.” Ker shook her head. “This is maybe half a Company, about sixty men, being used like a scouting patrol. Large enough to deal with anything that isn’t fully armed resistance, small enough to forage for itself and move quickly.”
He tilted his head, examining her face. “There’s something else, isn’t there?”
Ker chewed on her lower lip before answering. “They came here on purpose. They knew about Temlin before they got here. They may know where all the Halls are. But the important thing right now is that they’re using the road.”
Tel looked around. “From those rocks”—he pointed west— “we can ambush anyone who comes this way.”
“If by ‘anyone’ you mean ‘one.’ I’m certain a single soldier and someone who’s been doing combat drills with sticks should be able to take on a seasoned warrior, so long as the enemy comes along one at a time.”
“You have a better idea?” From his tone, Tel wanted to kill someone—and soon. Ker knew just how he felt. But they couldn’t stay here, whether the Halians returned or not. No shelter, nothing to eat . . . She looked up into the sky, no birds flying overhead.
“Can we get to Oste Camp without using the roads?”
“Well, we can.” Frowning, Tel scanned their surroundings as if he was expecting the ruins to give him advice. “It won’t be the fastest way, but it can be done.” He glanced up at the sky, then back the way they’d come. “We’ll have to follow the road for a bit, though.” He began to lead the way back.
“Tel.” He stopped, turning to face her. The words came surprisingly hard. “Maybe it’s best that we don’t tell anyone I’m a Talent.” With a jerk of her head, she gestured behind her. “I’m not a coward, but . . .” She bit her lip. “Best we keep it to ourselves until we’re sure it’s safe.”
• • •
Tel Cursar frowned, looked again at the destruction around them, and nodded. Shocked as she must be, Kerida was right.
Back on the road, he started them off at double time, needing to get Ker away from the destroyed Hall as quickly as possible. He was just as pleased to leave it behind himself, if he was honest. They hadn’t gone much farther when Ker began to falter, and he brought them back to normal walking pace. Finally he spotted what he’d been looking for, a point where the trees grew thin, and he signaled a halt. Ker stuck her hands into her armpits and raised her eyebrows.
“The road runs north northeast from the pass,” he said, pointing in front of them. “And then veers more to the west.” He pointed to the right. “We’ll be off the road if we head this way, without adding too much to the journey.”
Ker nodded and glanced upward before responding. “What about leaving the road back there, where those rocks are.” She pointed with her chin. “It would hide our trail.”
Tel shook his head, trying not to frown at her. “If they have dogs—”
“They’d have to come along pretty quickly for our scents to last in this cold and damp. And that’s if the dogs were looking specifically for us.” She glanced upward again.
Tel felt a surge of irritation. “What do you keep looking for?”
“What? Nothing. I was just wondering where the griffin might be.”
Tel bit down on the response that leaped to his tongue. The griffin. Whatever he might have said next went unspoken, as they both turned to look down the road in the direction they were headed.
“Singing?” How could there be singing?
“Off the road. Now.” Tel turned to run, and Ker followed him without hesitation. Later he realized that they’d left the road by way of the rocks. The nearby tree line was the only cover and they ran straight for it. With luck, their prints wouldn’t be particularly visible in the rough terrain.
Tel strained to hear anything over the sound of his own pounding heart—was the singing closer?—but he kept most of his attention on his footing. Ker was close behind him, and as they neared the safety of the trees, Tel gestured to the right with chopping motions of his hand. She veered off, heading for what looked like a snow-covered rock. Apart, they’d make smaller targets and have a better chance to do some damage themselves.
Tel dove into a shadowy cleft under three trees, breathing more easily when he crawled farther in without dislodging any snow. He flattened himself as best he could, struggling to get out his sword, and hoping that Ker remembered she still had the crossbow. She was somewhere off to his left, though he couldn’t hear or see her. He couldn’t see anything else either. The singing was louder, however, though the tune wasn’t familiar. He should recognize any of the Battle Wings’ marching songs.
Which meant this wasn’t one of the Battle Wings’ marching songs.
You can’t carry a tune to save your life, he told himself, wincing at the irony of the observation. Just now, saving his life was the point. Tel relaxed his grip on his sword.
The singing stopped raggedly, not sharp, like Polity soldiers when called to a halt. Tel inched over to his left, where the space left by a missing branch gave him a better view. There were seven people down on the road, all on foot. Five were Eagles, and carried packs. They weren’t standing in formation, which was odd, but the other two were Bears. Almost laughing with relief, Tel backed out of his hiding space, careful not to stand up too soon and bring snow down on himself.
Of course, the Bears would be the ones running point, fore and behind, though they were a bit close to the main group to be useful. At that moment one of the Eagles lifted his left arm and scratched the back of his neck in a most familiar way. Tel grinned and leaped to his feet.
“Shorden! Shorden!”
The two Bears looked around. One of them called out and pointed, and Tel ran toward the road.
• • •
Kerida was tightening the last fastener on the crossbow when she heard Tel call out, and saw him heading for the road. The soldiers were all looking his way, but only the two in Bear Wing purple were moving out to meet him.
“Thank the gods.” Ker’s head sagged down onto her forearm as every muscle loosened. Finally, they weren’t alone. Wherever these soldiers were headed, she and Tel could go with them. She slid over to her left, then froze.
Tel yelled “NO!” and sprang away from the purple tunics, running toward the road in the direction away from where she lay hidden. Startled into motion, Ker jerked the crossbow into position, but stopped with her fingers resting on the crank.
Tel must have seen something when he got closer to them, something that got him running, and if she got up now, even if she managed to shoot a couple of them with her crossbow before they reached Tel, all she’d accomplish was to be caught herself, making Tel’s efforts to save her worthless.
She almost did it anyway. Anything not to be alone again. But if he got away, the Mother knew he wouldn’t thank her for getting caught herself. She was still turning over options, trying not to feel like a coward, when the men who’d set off after Tel returned, dragging him between them.
Tel was on his feet, but his arms had been tied behind his back. Ker grimaced. They reached the waiting men—all men, Ker now realized, no women—and Tel was pushed to his knees. Her breath caught in her throat, and Ker cursed herself for not doing something, anything, in time to save him. She didn’t want to look. Didn’t want to watch as what happened to Cana at the Hall happened to Tel Cursar. She snaked forward a little more, feeling into the outer pocket of the pack for more crossbow quarrels.
But as she squirmed around, trying not to dislodge the quarrel already in the crossbow, Ker realized they were pulling Tel to his feet again, having fastened a rope around his neck. There was some arguing among the soldiers dressed as Eagles, but eventually these all shouldered their packs again and set off down the road once more. Ker waited,
cold and getting colder, until she could no long hear the tramp of their feet. Then she came out from behind her rock.
“They’d have had me as well,” she said aloud, needing to hear a friendly voice, even her own. It was true, but she didn’t feel any better than she had when she’d left her teachers and friends to be slaughtered back in Questin.
This small group of invaders was heading back down the road, toward the burned-out Hall, toward the Pass. The day was fairly well advanced; they’d be stopping soon for the night. Before she knew it, Kerida was bending over her own pack. Maybe there hadn’t been anything she could do except run, back at Questin Hall. But she wasn’t going to run now.
“SHORDEN! Alken! What are you doing? Help me!”
Tel was shoved to his knees; with his elbows tied behind him, it was a struggle even to stay upright. He spat out blood and searched the faces of the Eagles watching him. For a moment he thought they were like the two in Bear colors who’d lured him out of hiding, Halians in Polity clothing. But these men weren’t in disguise. He didn’t know the others, but Shorden and Alken were two of the group who’d had to leave him behind in the cave when his wound got bad.
And here they stood, unarmed but free. “Hey! Don’t you know me?”
But they did. Tel was sure of that. He’d seen people knocked on the head, dazed, momentarily unsure of where they were and who was speaking to them, but these two men had none of that look. They recognized him; that was clear.
They just didn’t care about him.
The Halians said something in a language Tel didn’t understand, and when the soldiers dressed in Eagle Wing green didn’t respond right away, they cuffed and prodded at them, but not as though they were slaves or prisoners. More like they were stubborn, or a little slow. Two of them, thankfully two that Tel didn’t know, helped hold him down while his hands were retied in front of him, a length of thong was looped around his neck, and he was hauled back to his feet.
“There’s only the two of them,” he said, looking around at the calm faces. “Why aren’t you fighting them?”
It looked like he wasn’t going to get an answer, but then Shorden said, “No point.”
“What do you mean? Even if some of us got hurt, all of us would be free.”
At this Shorden turned narrowed eyes on him. “What do you mean, ‘free’? What do you mean ‘all of us’? There’s only you.”
Tel’s mouth was so dry he couldn’t swallow. Shorden was genuinely puzzled. “There’s six of us, counting me, and there’s only the two of them. That’s what I mean.”
Shorden shook his head. “What’re you talking about?”
One of the enemy, the one with a red hood thrown back over his purple tunic, not the one with the broken nose, said something to Shorden and laughed. Shorden tilted his head, looking puzzled, and Red Hood repeated what he’d said, slowly. Shorden hesitated, and then he laughed, too.
Tel looked around at Alken and the other burdened soldiers. Some of them were smiling. He hunched his shoulders against a chill that had nothing to do with the weather. Suddenly, he wished Kerida were with him, even if she wasn’t very well trained at Flashing people yet. She might to able to figure out what was going on.
He clamped his teeth tighter shut. Imagine wishing the girl were here, instead of safe in some hidey-hole, or on her way down the road. After he’d done everything he could to give her the best chance of escape.
Red Hood said something to him, and when Tel didn’t respond, Shorden spoke. “Get up,” he said. “We’re going.”
For a moment Tel thought about resisting, and the impulse must have shown on his face because the noose around his neck tightened abruptly, cutting off his air and threatening to pull him off his knees. He nodded and swung himself up on legs growing numb from contact with the cold ground. Resistance was going to have to wait for a better moment.
Along the way, Tel tried several more times to engage Alken or Shorden in talk, but neither one paid him any further attention. Eventually, he gave up. The awkward, unsteady pace the Halians set was bad for the breathing, and made it difficult to talk. Or so he told himself. They’d only covered half the distance back to the burned-out remains of the Hall when they stopped. Red Hood and Bent Nose shoved and prodded the men dressed as Eagles—Tel couldn’t bring himself to think of them any other way—to set up camp. Alken and one of the others dropped their packs and went to forage for wood, while Shorden and another set up a fire. The fifth, a thickset blond, began going through the packs, sorting out foodstuffs and blankets. The oddest thing was that, left to themselves, each of the men moved more and more slowly, finally stopping completely, until Red Hood or Bent Nose came over to nudge them again.
Even then they were sluggish, giving every action, no matter how commonplace, a fair amount of thought before they carried through. Once the fire was set up, Red Hood lit it, using the starter he’d taken from Tel’s pouch.
Tel, himself, they left alone once they’d shoved him into a sitting position. No one seemed to want him to do anything but stay out of the way, and he wasn’t sure how he felt about that. Would they feed him before the questioning began?
“Don’t suppose you’ll untie me and let me escape?” he said to the blond when the two enemy were out of earshot. The beefy man stopped what he was doing and appeared to think about it. Tel found himself starting to grin.
“No,” the blond said finally, but as if he’d actually given it some thought. “There wouldn’t be any point.”
“Sure. Fine, then.” Tel sat quietly after that, his own thoughts turned inward.
As it happened, they did feed him, a thin stew made from melted snow and dried fish. Tel was just happy they didn’t offer him any travel cake, as they seemed to have plenty of those. He tried to be ready once the food was gone, but the questioning he had been expecting never came. Red Hood and Bent Nose didn’t mistreat him, but they didn’t pay him a lot of attention either, after leading him off to one side to relieve himself. When they doled out the blankets, they even tossed him one.
The men dressed as soldiers settled around the fire, each rolled up in his blanket, and appeared to fall asleep almost at once. Was this more of the strange magic that made them slow? Tel shook his head. Red Hood and Bent Nose played some version of flash-the-fingers that Tel was unfamiliar with, and as soon as it was over, Red Hood picked up his own blanket and Bent Nose moved out to the western edge of the camp, nearest the road, and just beyond the reach of the firelight.
Whoever and whatever they were, the invaders knew how to stand watch where the fire wouldn’t interfere with their night vision, and where the sentry wouldn’t be obvious to anyone who came upon the camp.
Tel lay on his side and tried to get comfortable. Even with his hands tied in front of him, the ground was too cold to make it easy to settle. He didn’t expect to fall asleep, but all his training told him to rest while he could, just like it had told him to eat when he could. If Ganni were here, he thought, would the old man be able to lift him right out of the camp and away? Or was that a different skill from keeping Tel from falling?
Tel grinned. You had to be in a bad spot, if you were wishing for Feelers. Best not to think about it.
He didn’t want to think about Kerida Nast either, but given his other options, he found it hard not to. Even the first time he’d seen her, in the kitchen at Questin Hall, he hadn’t mistaken her for a servant, though he’d never dreamed she was a Talent. She was average height for a girl, which made her much shorter than he was, but a good size for a soldier. Dark brown hair pulled off a long oval face, a sharp nose, and the greenest eyes he’d ever seen. Greener even than a cat’s.
He’d done what he could to make her safe—he still couldn’t believe after all he’d seen in the Peninsula, that he’d been fool enough to run down to the road when he’d seen the Polity uniforms. At least he’d managed to draw them away before anyo
ne thought to see if there were more like him in the trees. Kerida even had the better part of his pack, though his captors were the richer by his glow stone, his sword, and his fire starter.
He shifted again, prompting a break in the snoring of the nearest sleeper. Tel breathed silently through his open mouth, counting one-Cohort, two-Cohorts to help himself relax. No point in giving the others a grudge against him by keeping them awake.
• • •
Kerida tried to blow on her fingers without making any noise. Not that she thought anyone could hear her. The last time she’d heard snoring like this was when Donard the gardener’s boy had fallen out of an apple tree and cracked his head. Because of the injury training she’d received in the military, Kerida had been one of the people assigned to sit by the sleeping boy, and make sure he woke up at measured intervals. Now it was as if the whole camp of men had head injuries, though they’d all been able to walk, and go about setting up camp.
Ker shivered. She was almost cold enough to wish herself near the fire. When she’d finally set off down the road after Tel and his captors, she’d found she wasn’t as far behind them as she’d expected. The men were carrying heavy packs, and weren’t using any kind of orderly march. Ker had been able to keep up with them easily, even though she’d had to keep off the road. She’d been fortunate that the ground, though not frozen, was firm. There had only been one marshy bit she’d had to detour around.
Even that had turned out luckily, since she’d found and climbed this tree, from which she’d been keeping an eye on the camp. She’d seen the men gathering wood, cooking and eating, and had watched them settle down for sleep, easily picking out Tel Cursar from his height. She didn’t know whether to be surprised or relieved when it seemed only two of the enemy soldiers were going to keep watch. If the other men weren’t prisoners—and Tel seemed to be the only one bound—why weren’t more of them taking their turn?
Halls of Law Page 17
