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“Smarter than Maggur,” Owen muttered as they rode on.
“You think he’s stupid?” Neal demanded. “He’s just united a country of men who live to take chunks out of one another. What better way to keep them from rebelling against him than by starting a war with us?”
“And they’re hungry,” the convict Uinse added. “Their lords tell them how rich we are, and they want to be rich, too.” He smiled thinly. “I can understand that.”
“Understanding that is what got you hard labor to start with,” Jacut pointed out.
“Hush,” Kel told them softly. A scout was coming in, one of Connac’s men.
“Lady, have a look,” he said, offering her a blob of horse dung in a gloved hand.
Kel poked it and discovered it was soft yet, only dry on the outside. “We’re close,” she whispered. She glanced at the sky, judging the angle of light coming through the trees. “Where are we?” she muttered, opening a map.
“I’d guess about here.” Dom leaned across to tap a spot on the map below the joining of two rivers. From that point the Smiskir flowed northwest; the second river was the Pakkai, flowing down to the Smiskir from the northeast. “It’s almost dark. They’ll pitch camp.”
“Where the rivers meet?” suggested Owen.
Connac shook his head. “Too damp. But close, for the water.”
“I want three scouts, on foot,” Kel said. “Dom, Connac, Jacut”—she had noticed that the other convict soldiers followed Jacut’s lead—“your quietest people, right now. Send them forward along the road, with care, mind. I need to know where the refugees’ camp is and where the guards are positioned. We’ll be there.” She pointed to the woods to her left, where a few fallen trees gave them something to duck behind.
The foot scouts were chosen. Kel sent Jump, his dogs, and his cats to call the mounted scouts in. They returned to eat cold sausage, bread, and cheese with the rest while the horses were fed. The sparrows came in for the night, settling drowsily on packs, saddles, and manes. Kel envied them the ability to stop for the day and leave the work to others. She wished she could do as much. Instead, she tended her weapons, cleaning her glaive thoroughly, then sharpening the edge on it, her sword, and her dagger. She was checking the straps on Peachblossom’s armor when the foot scouts returned. The sun gilded only the tops of the trees when they arrived, shadows thick in the low ground between the foothills and mountains.
Everyone but the four men on watch gathered around the scouts. The men scraped a square of ground clear of grass so the scouts could draw a map for them. Tobe produced a lantern and lit it so everyone could see as the scouts drew the enemy camp with sticks.
“Here’s the ford,” said Dom’s chief scout. “The two rivers, and this level patch. Then there’s a rise on the far side of the road, our side. That’s their camp.”
“There’s about two hundred fighters. Only a hundred are soldiers, and sloppy ones at that.” Uinse had scouted for the convicts. The silver mark on his forehead shimmered in the dark like a pale moon. “I got close enough to hear their talk. They had two hundred more soldiers, but they rode west on the Vassa road after they crossed back to Scanra. These civilian slavetakers was waiting here. They took charge of our people. It don’t look like they expect trouble. I saw one guard nodding off, and it not even dark.”
“They’ve set the wagons in a circle on the west side o’ camp.” That was Connac’s scout, Weylin. He drew lines to indicate the wall of wagons. “Horses are picketed here. Our folk is chained inside the wall. I heard a couple of the slavetakers say they’re never takin’ unbroke slaves again, however cheap. Seems they’ve lost wagon wheels, their horses keep goin’ lame, an’ even using the whip it takes forever to move out or make camp.”
“They whipped our people?” cried Tobe, furious.
Dom clasped the boy’s thin shoulder with one big hand. “That’s what slavers do. Like some whip a horse to break him to bridle.”
Tobe’s hands clenched.
Kel grinned for the first time in what felt like years. She had known her people would not go tamely or quickly. They could fight even without weapons. She looked forward to putting real weapons into their hands once more. “Uinse, did you see the other squad of convicts? Gil’s squad?”
Uinse nodded.
“Can anyone on that squad pick locks?” she asked.
It was fully dark when the dog trotted into the slave camp. “As bold as brass,” said one of the guards. They decided the scarred, ugly animal might have belonged to one of the families that had fled the border country. It had certainly seen hard times, as shown by his missing ear and broken tail.
The only further notice the guards took of him was to warn the slaves that if they fed the animal, it would come out of their rations. The guards were angry and irritable after a day when a single vexation had spawned twelve more. All they wanted was their supper and bed after their watch.
They didn’t notice the slaves had gone quiet at the dog’s appearance. They also didn’t see the dog leave several thin pieces of iron next to the convict Morun, whose criminal life was laid on a foundation of locks.
As the night passed, the guards didn’t see the trickle of dogs and cats that entered the camp while the slaves pretended to sleep. Each animal carried something. Dogs quietly set belt and boot knives next to selected people. The last two to visit, both rangy cats, left packets for the women who’d been forced to cook for the guards. Each packet was filled with herbs and marked with a dot of emerald fire that vanished as the women took them. The herbs went into the guards’ pots.
The civilian slave-merchant guards who stood the night watches were not the most attentive. Fighting drowsiness, not as wary as the soldiers this close to the border, they failed to notice when their fellows on watch began to disappear. They also didn’t see the ugly dog pull up the stakes that picketed the horses.
For every three civilian guards there was a soldier, bored, angry, and tired. One of them ordered a slave woman to bring him a cup of tea as the sky began to lighten in the east. She brought it with a wink and a sidelong glance that told the man he might have company in his bed that night, if he wanted it. He gulped his tea, thinking it was time these women realized how to make their lives easier. He nodded approval as the woman carried tea to the other guards, but he also watched to make sure that she gave none of them the same flirtatious glance.
The tea, hot and strong as it was, didn’t make the guard feel wakeful. If anything, it made him sleepier. He was about to call for another mug when the arrows flew out of the dark, hitting the soldier guards first. Most went down immediately and did not rise again.
The refugees who had received knives during the long night slipped out of unlocked manacles. They came up behind their captors, killing them as quietly as they knew how.
Warriors attacked the slave camp on foot. They wielded swords, axes, and in one case a heavy Yamani glaive with deadly force.
It was soon over. Afterward Kel found that every slave guard and soldier lay dead. She wasn’t sure if she was relieved or not. Had any survived, she would have ordered their deaths to keep word of the Tortallans’ presence from getting out, but the refugees had taken revenge on each of their captors. Kel wasn’t sure if she ought to thank Mithros for sparing her the need to give the order, but she thanked him all the same.
Checking the dead, she saw a flurry of movement in the road. Peliwin Archer hacked at a dead guard, chopping his body repeatedly with a longsword she could barely swing.
Kel stopped her. “Peliwin, he’s dead. Enough.” Gently she unwrapped the older girl’s fingers from the hilt of the sword.
Peliwin looked at Kel, despair in her eyes. There was a long, purpling bruise on the side of her lovely face and bruises around her neck as well. “He hurt me,” she replied, her voice a croak.
Kel wrapped an arm around her shoulders and led Peliwin away from the dead man. “You’ve fixed it so he’ll never hurt anyone else. You can forget about him.?
? She winced, knowing she’d just said a very foolish thing. “I mean, you can live your life. I guess you won’t be able to forget him.” She took her arm away.
“No,” Peliwin admitted, tears streaming down her cheeks. “No, I don’t think I will.” She took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. “I’m going to the river, to wash.”
“Stay in view of our people,” Kel told her. As Peliwin made her way down to the water’s edge, Kel saw Olka Valestone, Idrius’s soft-spoken wife, join her. The quiet woman had a way of soothing people. Kel hoped Olka would be more comfort for Peliwin than Kel herself.
All of the refugees showed the effects of their time with their captors. Fanche’s back was bloody from shoulders to waist. She had particularly annoyed her guards. Saefas had a whip weal across his face and more on his back. Idrius Valestone, unusually quiet now, had been punched until he was barely recognizable.
Kel was refilling her water flask when Tobe raced up to her. “Lady! Lady Kel, they ain’t here! Loey and Meech and Gydo and them, they ain’t here!”
Kel nodded. “I know.” During the fight she had noticed there were no children in sight. She had expected it, in a way. “They were taken?” she asked Fanche.
“Sunset last night,” Idrius said through puffy lips and broken teeth. “Across the ford. They’re with a hundred and fifty soldiers and that animal Stenmun, riding.”
“You’d’ve been proud,” Fanche said wearily. “They fought like wildcats, all of them. We were terrified they’d be killed, but Stenmun wouldn’t let them be hurt. Now he has them. Gods know where they’re going.”
“Across the ford where?” demanded Owen.
“Upriver,” said Adner the ploughman. “Up the Pakkai.”
Kel nodded. They were on their way to Blayce. She summoned her soldiers. “Drag the bodies and the wagons into the woods,” she ordered them. “Get them out of sight. I don’t want anyone who rides this road to know a fight took place here. Merric, post watchers on the road here and to the ford. We don’t want surprises. Tobe, round up the horses, get them ready to go. Everyone, collect weapons and food. You’ll need them on your way back.”
Even those who had started off to do as she ordered turned back.
“What do you mean, ‘you’ll need them’?” demanded Esmond suspiciously.
“Exactly what she says,” Neal replied wearily. “She’s going after the little ones, and Stenmun, and Blayce.” He spoke as he worked, one hand on Fanche’s shoulder, one on Idrius’s chin, green fire streaming through his fingers to heal them. “You’d better tie me to my horse after I get this lot fit to ride,” he told Kel.
She propped her fists on her hips. “I want you to return with them.”
“Not a chance,” Neal said crisply, looking into her face.
Kel wanted to argue, but his eyes were as hard as emeralds, daring her to try it. She knew him. There would be no talking Neal out of riding on with her.
“They go without me and my boys, too,” said Dom as he handed a sword to Gil. “My orders were to stay with you.”
“We’re stayin’, too, me an’ my squad,” Gil announced.
Kel looked at Owen and Tobe. Their eyes were as steady as Neal’s, Dom’s, and Gil’s. She didn’t feel like arguing. “The rest of you,” she began.
“You’re not going without me,” announced Fanche.
“Or me,” Saefas instantly added.
Kel rubbed her temples. She felt a headache coming on. “Merric, you’re in charge,” she ordered. “Get them back across the Vassa and safe home, to Mastiff if you can. Neal, tell him how to contact the smugglers.”
“But Kel,” Merric protested.
“It’s our duty,” she replied, stubborn. “These people are under our protection. I can’t go back, do you understand? I have to get the little ones, and I have to settle with Blayce and Stenmun Kinslayer. Otherwise they’ll be making almost two hundred new killing devices for us to fight.”
“Oh,” Merric said quietly, understanding at last. “What the Chamber wanted you to do, right?”
Kel nodded.
“But our children,” a refugee protested. “Oughtn’t we go after them?”
“I have a reasonable certainty we’ll meet killing devices,” Kel replied. The refugees paled. “In any event, I need to move fast, and I need to know you’re safe. That means you go home. Esmond and Seaver, Connac, you’re all with Sir Merric, understand?” She looked at the refugees again. “We know the rest of you can fight at need. Take your orders from Sir Merric. If I live I swear I’ll bring your little ones back. But I can’t be worried about protecting you as well.”
“You could die out there,” whispered Olka Valestone.
“I hope not,” Kel replied, trying to sound casual. “I put eight long, hard years into this. I’ll feel very foolish if I’m killed with the paint still wet on my shield. Now let’s get moving.”
June 9–10, 460
the Pakkai road
sixteen
OPPORTUNITIES
Now Kel was free. She was surprised that she didn’t float despite her mail and armor. The confusion, frustration, and uncertainty of the last few months were over. Her path was clear. Stenmun was in her way, as were the soldiers he commanded, but Kel had an idea or two about how to deal with the odds against her and her people.
Most of the cats and dogs had gone back to Tortall with the refugees, but Jump and ten camp dogs were part of her group, as was a cat who had tucked herself into one of Dom’s saddlebags. She’d hissed and clawed when he tried to give her to Merric’s group. Dom informed Kel he made it a rule never to argue with a lady, and the gray-and-orange-marbled female rode like a queen before him, viewing the landscape with pale green eyes. Kel had negotiated with the sparrows until the flock split. Part went with Merric; part stayed with Kel. Nari, Arrow, Quicksilver, and Duck were the four Kel knew were with her, but there were eight more, all eagerly scouting the trees.
They couldn’t range far on either side of the Pakkai. Between the river and the mountains that bordered it lay just a mile of ground, thick with trees and brush. It was forsaken country, given over to deer, elk, boar, wildcats, and the occasional bear. On the far side of the river was a scant border of trees at the edge of steep, hard cliffs. The Pakkai itself ran fast and cold, as cold as the Vassa. All Kel needed in such restricted country was a handful of human and animal scouts.
The road showed signs of recent horse traffic. She hoped that was Stenmun and his men, not a sign that the road was much used by anyone else. When they stopped to rest and water the horses, Kel beckoned to Fanche, Saefas, and the convicts who had been taken by the raiders. “Tell me about Stenmun and his command,” she ordered.
It was Fanche who spoke, her eyes as hard as jet. “He’s a big one,” she said, arms wrapped around her knees, skirts neatly drawn over her legs. “Six foot five?”
“Six foot seven,” amended Saefas. “A broad-sword of a man.”
“Handsome enough in a Scanran way,” Fanche continued. “Long blond hair, beard. Graying at the sides and in the beard, but he’s fit.”
“More than fit,” grumbled Morun. “Backhanded a man at Haven in the throat and crushed his wind-pipe.”
“He favors a double-headed axe,” continued Fanche. “He’s as fast with it as you are with your glaive, Lady Kel. Brown eyes, thin nose, hard mouth.”
“He wouldn’t let ’em hurt the little ones, for all their mischief undoing laces and saddle girths,” Gil pointed out.
“He said his master, Blayce, wants them unmarked,” Saefas replied. “He didn’t so much as look at the grown folk, ’less we crossed him.” He frowned at Fanche. “You kept needling him.”
The woman shrugged, stiff despite Neal’s healing. “I wanted to see if I could make him slip. Lots of control, that one. The men were afraid of him, you could tell.”
“One of his soldiers said he’d a man skinned alive for liftin’ supplies,” one of the convicts volunteered. “I believed ’im. He’
d the look of a man that’s seen a skinnin’.”
“I don’t mean to let him skin any of us,” Kel said.
“But what can we do?” Owen asked. “There’s five of them to one of us, just about.”
Kel smiled at him. She had wondered when they’d remember that. “I learned something from Lord Raoul,” she said, looking at Dom, who stood nearby listening as he watched Neal eat. His cousin leaned against a tree, exhausted by the healing he’d done just so the refugees could make it back to Fort Mastiff.
“Which lesson would that be?” Dom asked. “He teaches so many useful things.”
“When the odds are against you, change the odds,” she explained. “We don’t throw a log down and try to light that for a fire. We whittle it to kindling. That’s how we’ll treat this Stenmun and his folk. We’ll whittle them down. First, though, we narrow the distance between us and them.” She stood and twisted her shoulders back and forth to loosen her spine. “Mount up.”
On they rode, as silent as mounted warriors could be, straining eyes and ears for signs of the enemy. They set as fast a pace as the warhorses could manage. It wasn’t as quick as they could have traveled with lighter animals, but it had to do. They needed all the fighters they had, and that included the warhorses. When Tobe said they had to rest, the company halted. Kel would take no chances with the health of Peachblossom, Neal’s Magewhisper, or Happy.
All along the way they found signs of Stenmun and his captives. There was no need for Meech to strip his doll of hair when buttons, buckles, food, coins, and scraps of leather and cloth littered the road. Haven’s children were not cowed by Stenmun’s soldiers. Their courage gave Kel hope.
She was thinking that it was almost time to stop for the night when sparrows and the forward scout, Owen, rode in. “They’re camped three miles up,” he told Kel. “They’re well settled and have sentries posted.”
