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on the front seat.
"I'd like to go with you." A stout mon approached her. "I'm Mardeth. Your
friend needs tending. You cannot both fight and tend. How far are you going?"
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"Merkreth's Crossing." Gaeatyra never liked having help underfoot. Like all
the Taladrim, she was a loner. 'A mon travels fastest, who travels alone.' Yet
it had been difficult carrying Ari. She hesitated. Then said, "So long as you
don't expect to be entertained."
"I don't."
"Climb up and keep an eye on things."
Emer fetched her horses and Gaeatyra tied them to the wagons. By then the
Taladri had registered that no one had come out of the fourth house the one
she had seen the raiders emerge from last. She went to investigate. No one
seemed willing to go in with her, which aroused her suspicions. They appeared
to have an obvious reluctance, holding back, glancing at each other uneasily.
Only Mardeth sat impassively staring from the wagon, as if unaffected by her
decision to go there.
There had been five people living in the house. They were all dead. The
sa'necari had rited them. Gaeatyra came out and spoke to the headman about it.
"We feared it," he told her. "He said he would make an example of one family.
Made us draw lots. Otherwise he would kill us all."
"So you just gave him a family?"
"What else could we have done?"
"Better a clean death than what he did to them!" Gaeatyra grabbed the
headman, dragging him to the house. She kicked the door open and shoved him
inside. The headman blanched and fell to his knees, vomiting.
"Their broken ghosts will haunt this place for eternity or until the true
child of light wields the Sunfire staff to restore the broken souls to the
wheel. I doubt you'll live to see it."
As she emerged from the house, Gaeatyra saw that Emer had caught the escaped
horse and Mardeth had tied it to the back of the buckboard. The Taladri
mounted up and they left. Toward morning, Mardeth finally spoke. "I objected
to surrendering like lambs to the lottery. They could make us worship with our
mouths, but not our hearts. Father hit me. I disowned them all."
"Headman?"
"Yes."
* * * *
A week later, they pulled up in front of an inn in Three Forks late in the
afternoon. Gaeatyra favored this one, glancing over the three stories of
lighted windows in the gathering dusk. The innkeeper knew her from many
previous stays and never questioned what she did or why. That made her
comfortable.
"Wait for me," Gaeatyra said, dismounting. "I'll get us a room for the night
and come back for you."
Weary folk, most of them armed, filled the common room. She spotted two that
she knew ran with Nans Gryphonheart: Travis Potshard and Luck Settlesby from
Gormond's Reach. "Travis! Luck! Where's Nans?" She caught the look in their
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eyes, the armbands and knew what they were going to say.
"She didn't make it. I saw her fall& and& she didn't get up," Travis said, a
soul-deep bleakness edging his words. "Minnoras was a bloodbath. Sa'nekaryiane
took the place. That was bloody to begin with. Populace saw it happening. They
must have connected it with the dead priests. Remember how they rose up and
stopped Zol fifteen years ago? Well, they must have thought they could do it
again, cause they went after the bitch and her troops. She made mince of
them."
The news about Nans left a hole in Gaeatyra. They had had their differences,
but they were comrades and, after a fashion, friends.
"The bitch turned everything loose on the people." Luck drew a leather thong
from beneath his shirt with a scrimshaw round carved into a bear. "Itch didn't
make it either. Vampire got him. Travis got the fang-ugly."
"Sorry about your brother. He was a good mon." Gaeatyra found it easier to
speak about Itch, who she had less of a connection to, than Nans. "I have a
badly wounded mon outside. It's not so much the wound itself as what caused
it." She pulled the wrapped blade from her belt and laid it in front of them.
"You take a look at it while I arrange for a room and get her inside."
Luck slipped his gloves on before he unwrapped it. Gaeatyra nodded her
approval at that: it was common knowledge that most sa'necari shit you did not
touch barehanded until you knew whether it was safe or not.
Gaeatyra got the only room left. It had only a single bed so the innkeeper's
wife and daughters put up cots for Gaeatyra and Mardeth; Ari would get the
bed.
Travis appeared at her elbow. "You want some help getting your gear up,
considering you've got wounded?" Travis knew Gaeatyra's attitude toward having
help underfoot.
"Yeah." She stopped abruptly. "Travis, I think you're wrong. Call it a gut
feeling, but I can't believe Nans is dead."
"Gaeatyra& "
Gaeatyra's lips curled back, making her uglier than ever. "You actually touch
her dead body, Travis? You dig her grave?"
"No. I saw her killed. We all did. She fell and didn't rise."
"Then you don't know for certain." She spat on the ground.
Travis changed the subject with a rueful look. "How far you intend on going?"
"Merkreth's Crossing."
"You mind if we ride along with you?"
A wolfish grin split Gaeatyra's face. "So long as you don't mind my
collecting a few more kills along the way."
"Deal."
* * * *
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A week farther down the road, Nans finally saw some of the trouble she had
been expecting. Ryss had sold her a wagon and a two-horse team, which meant
the small children rode and Ifor was able to rest lying down in the back. The
guardsmon was improving slowly. The adults walked in a defensive square around
it. Deryna drove.
The road forked a hundred yards ahead of them, its length veiled by willows.
The ground fell away to Nans' right in a short, sharp drop to a brushy field
leading into a thinly wooded area. Nans heard a sizeable company approaching
along the left fork as they neared it. She signaled a halt to check it out. As
the yuwenghau trotted toward the fork, she heard Deryna suddenly whip up the
horses behind her with a shout and spun to see six myn climb up out of the
bushes onto the road. Seven followed from the woods to her left. She ran back,
shouting for everyone to run, and saw more emerge from the trees to the other
side. They all obeyed, except Kell.
"You're not fighting them alone," he said.
Nans cast aside the staff in favor of her sword. They backed away, letting
these people come to them, giving their own more time to flee.
"Fine sword."
It was the first time Kell had seen her draw it. GimliGloikynen, god of
dwarves and metalworking, had given it to her the day she came of age. That
was the day the nobility of Gormond's Reach stopped referring to her as the
Bastard at least to her face because gods and magical creatures arrived at her
party with gifts. She would never forget the looks on their faces. Nor would
William. The king still laughed about it. They would laugh about it again, if [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]