By the Sword (34 page)

“Conference,” the shape whispered back, one hand on its horse's nose to keep it silent. Not a halt for rest, then. That was a disappointment, but hardly a surprise. Kero turned Hellsbane around and pointed her head along the backtrail, making use of the mare's superior senses to keep watch for the rest of the party. “Guard,” she said into the gray's ear, and slipped the rein over her arm, leaving Hellsbane relatively free. While the mare guarded the trail with ears and nose, Kero slipped her water bottle off the front of the saddle and took a long-wished-for drink. Her stomach was too knotted with fear and tension to even think about eating, but some of the others had taken advantage of the brief rest to snatch a mouthful or feed a handful of grain to a horse.

Finally the word went around the circle; “There's a fork in the game trail. We're splitting again.”

Kero sighed; it was a logical move, but not one she relished. And it meant they'd be moving on into the night. She patted Hellsbane's neck comfortingly; the mare wasn't going to like this either.

 

They split twice more during the grueling, half-blind trek through the darkness, and when dawn-trickled pale pink light over the hilltops and through the thick trees, there were no more than twenty riders left in Kero's group. She didn't know any of them terribly well, except for the leader, the head of all the scout-groups, a colorless woman known only as Lyr.

She mounted with the rest at Lyr's signal, and they formed a group around her. “I know you're all tired,” the scout-leader said in a flat voice, “But we still have at least one party on our tail. I'm going to try something; back there in the dark they may have lost track of who was following what, and if you're with me on this, I want to head straight across the Border into Karse itself.”

The hard-bitten man in worn leathers on Kero's right coughed as if he was holding back an exclamation or objection. Lyr turned her expressionless eyes on him for a moment.

“I know what you're thinking, Tobe,” she said, with no sign of rancor. “You're thinking I'm crazy. Can't say I blame you. Here's my thought: if we head straight across the Border, open like, and stop trying to hide the backtrail, they
may
think they've gotten confused in the dark and they're following one of their own groups. Border won't be patrolled that thickly here; they save the heavy patrols for farther in.”

“They do?” said a stocky girl that had just joined before the beginning of this campaign, a brown-haired, brown-eyed, brown-skinned girl with “farmer” all over her. But she had to be good, or she wouldn't be a Skybolt. “Why?”

“Bandits,” Lyr said succinctly. “Real ones. Karsites let ‘em stay here, both to confuse the issue when their regulars come across raiding, and to discourage their own people from trying to cross over into someplace else. So there's a kind of buffer zone along here that the Karsite patrols don't bother with.”

The girl nodded, her lips tightening a little. “Which means that's something we'll have to look out for, too.”

Lyr shrugged. “It's them, or the real Karsites behind us. Bandits would only kill us if we lost.”

“A good point,” the girl replied bleakly, and from her tone, Kero guessed that this was yet another Skybolt who had personal experience of the Karsites.

“Sounds like a good plan to me,” Kero said quietly when Lyr looked to her, and she saw several others nodding, including the brown girl.

“Then let's go for it.” Lyr turned her horse around, and sent the beast trotting east, toward the Border. During the night, they had gone from dry, scrub-covered hills to lusher lands, thickly covered with the kind of trees Kero felt justified in calling a “tree.” The hills were taller, too, and although they were also rockier and more precipitous, the soil seemed richer here. If this was the kind of territory Karse was trying to claim, Kero could understand their reasoning, although she obviously couldn't agree with it. Within a few furlongs, the game trail came out above a
real
trail, one with the signs of shod hoofprints on it. Instead of avoiding the trail, as they had been, Lyr led them right down onto it, and they rode along single file as if they belonged here. Kero, who was riding tail again, had to keep reminding herself not to turn and look behind. It felt as if there were eyes and arrows trained on her back the moment they broke out of cover, even though she knew their followers couldn't possibly have gotten within line-of-sight yet.

Only the presence of birds and an occasional rabbit or squirrel along the trail gave her any feeling of real comfort. If there had been someone ahead of them, there wouldn't
be
any birds to startle up as they were doing. If there was someone following them off the trail, the birds would be similarly disturbed—and the only birds on the wing Kero saw were those who were going about normal business, not those whose straight-line flights showed them to be frightened into taking wing.

She saw Lyr watching the birds, too, and coming to the same conclusions, for the scout leader's shoulders relaxed marginally.

Gradually, as the morning lengthened, and the sun rose above the trees, she lost that feeling of having watchers behind her. Lyr stopped the group from time to time-but she didn't send one of the others back to look for pursuers as Kero had expected she would; she went herself. The first two times she returned with the faintest of frowns, but the third, just before noon, she returned with just as faint a smile.

She let them all stop when their path intersected with a clear, cold river, which horses and riders were equally grateful for. She didn't say anything, but everyone knew; they were no longer being followed, and it was safe to rest for a little, eat, and rest and water the horses.

Watering the horses came first for all of them. At the beginning of their flight, quite a few of the Skybolts had remounts with them—very few horses had the stamina of Hellsbane, and most scouts had two or even three extras. Now those remounts were gone, lost in the fighting, and after a steady night of riding, the beasts were weary. Not lathered, but worn, without any reserves. When Lyr finished watering her horse, unsaddled and quietly tethered it and spread some grain for it to eat, the rest of the group sighed with relief and followed her example. Their horses were their life—and it had worried all of them to have to treat them this way.

“Who wasn't out yesterday?” Lyr asked, and got four hands in reply. “All right,” she said. “You four are first guard. Wake four more about mid-afternoon
—
who're my volunteers?” Kero was about to raise her hand, but someone else beat her to it. So instead, she tethered Hellsbane, munched a handful of dried fruit, and laid herself down on what looked like bracken with her bedroll for a pillow, pausing only long enough to loosen the straps of her armor a little. She was asleep as soon as she'd wriggled into a marginally comfortable position.

 

It seemed as if she'd just closed her eyes, but when she woke to a hand shaking her right shoulder—right was for “safe” waking, left for when you wanted someone to wake up quickly and quietly because of a bad situation—she sat up and rubbed her eyes without a grumble. Her waker was Tobe, and he smiled sympathetically as she blinked at him. However short a time it had seemed, the sun
was
a lot farther west than it had been when she'd dropped off to sleep, and there was no doubt she'd gotten the full amount of rest promised.

Satisfied that she was awake, Tobe moved on to the next fallen body. Kero levered herself up out of the bracken, wincing a little at bruises and rubbed places, and glad she was still too young to suffer from joint-ache from sleeping on the ground.
And gods be thanked for keeping me in one piece through all this—may you continue to do so!
She walked stiffly to streamside, up current of where the horses were, and knelt down on a wide, flat stone on the bank. Tobe joined her as she gathered a double-handful of cold water and splashed it over her face. It felt wonderful, especially on her gritty eyes.

“Fill your water skin,” he advised. “Lyr says we're right off our maps, and she has no idea when we'll hit water next.”

Kero nodded, and splashed her face again, wishing she dared bathe. Going dirty could be dangerous as well as unpleasant; if the enemy used dogs or pigs as guards, or if their horses were trained (as was Hellsbane) to go alert at an unfamiliar scent, you were a fool not to bathe as often as you could.

But there was no hope for it; there was no time. She compromised by taking just long enough to strip off her armor and change the tunic and shirt underneath; Lyr and several of the others were already doing the same, so it was safe to assume she wouldn't take Kero's head off for causing an unnecessary delay. Dirty shirt and tunic were rolled as small as possible and went into the bottom of the pack.

Food and drink came next; Hellsbane got her full ration of grain first, plus Kero pulled a good armful of grass for her, then Kero dug out a handful of dried meat and another of dried fruit. She resaddled Hellsbane while both of them were eating, promising the mare a good grooming as soon as possible. A kettle was making the rounds; when she accepted it from the brown girl, it proved to be half full of some kind of herb tea. Kero raised an eyebrow at her, but the girl shrugged; so Kero dipped the tin cup in it and drank it down.

It was
feka-tea;
double-strength and unsweetened, it was bitter as death and a powerful stimulant. Some of the scouts used it on long patrols; Lyr must have found someone with a supply—assuming she didn't have any herself—and made up a sun-brew while they all slept. A black kettle left in the sun to steep made tea as strong as anything boiled, and Lyr was too canny to risk a fire. They'd probably all need this tea before the night was over; too little sleep had killed plenty of times, as someone nodded out and fell behind the rest on a trek like this one.

When the kettle finished its round, Lyr took it from the last to drink and beckoned them all close to her; they stood shoulder to shoulder in a huddle, like children before a game. “We're in Karse now, in the buffer zone,” she said quietly. “There'll be no fires while we're here, nothing to bring us to the attention of anyone—a Karsite patrol wduldn't have a fire either; they make cold camps always unless they're in a siege. We're going a little farther east, riding this trail until just after sunset. Then we'll be turning north, through the night, then west as soon as we hit anything that looks like a road. Once we start going west, we'll be traveling entirely by night. The Karsites do that, sometimes, and it'll be harder for‘someone to tell that we aren't a patrol of theirs if we meet 'em after dark.
If
that happens, is there anybody who speaks Karsite better than me?”

The brown girl spoke up. “Me mum's Karsite,” she offered.

“Can you give me a bit of a speech about going west to harass the heathen, with all the Sunlord crap attached?”

The girl spouted off a bit of liquid gabble; difficult to believe that a people as intransigent and violent as the Karsites had such a beautiful language. Kero didn't understand it, but Lyr evidently. did; she nodded in satisfaction. “Better than me by a good furlong; right, if we run into a patrol,
you're
the leader. Think you can reckon what to tell ‘em without me coachin' you?”

“Aye,” the girl asserted sturdily, blushing a bit. “Mum useta tell us what them officers was like—bit like the Rethwellan reg‘lars, only stuffed full of that religious dung and stricter about orders and rules. So long as I keep insisten' it's orders we're followin', and praise Vkandis often enough, should be ail right. The half of ‘em can't read nor write, so havin' verbal orders isn't going to make 'em think twice.”

Lyr looked satisfied, and patted the girl on the shoulder. “Right, then. let's mount up and make some time.”

They turned to their horses—and that was when Hellsbane flung up her head and screamed a warning.

Kero didn't even stop to think; she just threw herself across the clearing and into the saddle. She didn't quite make it before the horse lunged; she only got halfway over, clinging with both hands and gritting her teeth as the mare threw herself sideways to avoid a swung ax. The ground had sprouted armed men, it seemed—Hellsbane's scream had been the only warning before the attack. Lyr must have left someone as a guard, but just as surely, those guards were dead now.

Hellsbane pivoted. Kero managed to use the mare's momentum to swing herself properly up into the saddle; she pulled Need then, and looked for a target. Battle fever took over; she was wide awake and alert, feeling as fresh as if she'd risen from a feather bed with a full night's sleep behind her. There was someone else operating behind her eyes now, someone who took a fierce enjoyment in dealing death and evading it. Later, she'd be tired and a little sick—but not now. Not now, when her heart raced and the blood sang in her ears, and everything seemed sharper and clearer than it ever was outside of a fight....

She had plenty of targets to choose from. As motley as these attackers were, they had to be real bandits, but they outnumbered the Skybolts, and they knew how to fight. In general, a mounted fighter has the advantage over an unmounted man, but these bandits knew how to negate that advantage.

In fact, even as she looked for a target, she spotted a snaggle-toothed, bearded man swinging for Kero with a hooked pike designed to catch in her armor and unhorse her.

Assuming Hellsbane let him....

The mare saw him as soon as Kero did; she reared a little in place, to warn her rider, then reared to her full height, flailing out with both hooves and crow-hopping forward on her hind legs as she did so. He was
not
expecting that, and froze, mouth open, staring at the horse. Those powerful hooves caught and splintered the pike, then came down squarely on the head of the wielder.