By the Sword (42 page)

His relationships with other Heralds had never gone beyond friendship and a little intimate company. And
he
almost always had to initiate the latter.

Kero initiated lovemaking as often as he did; pouncing on him, giving him soft little love-bites and growling like a large playful cat—languidly rubbing his shoulders or scratching his back, then turning the exercise into more intimate caresses. He shivered a little, a smile playing around the comers of his mouth. She was a truly remarkable, exciting, bedmate—

But she was more than that. She treated him outside of bed like an absolutely equal partner, taking on her share of the chores without a quibble, substituting things he couldn't do—like hunting—without an argument.

And she had entered his thoughts the way no one else, man or woman, ever had. He wanted to show her his home, to see her excitement, her reactions. He wanted to share everything with her.

He wanted, most of all, to make her understand. Because he wanted to hear her say she was willing to be his partner from now on....
:I want to get her into Valdemar. I know once I get her there, she'll understand, she'll see what it's like for us, and she'll understand everything.:

:If she ever
could,
she
—: The Companion cut the thought off, and Eldan wondered what it was he almost said.

:It doesn't matter. Not now. Just an idle speculation. I agree, we should get her into Valdemar if we can. I think it would make all the difference.: He felt Ratha's
reticence, and didn't press. Whatever it was, if it was important enough, Ratha would tell him in his own time.

:You are clear, now,: the Companion concluded.
:I will check ahead.:

Eldan double-checked the road through the eyes of every bird and beast he could touch, and confirmed Ratha's statement. He opened his eyes again, and touched Kero on the elbow, carefully.

“We can go,” he said quietly. “We've both checked.”

“Good,” she replied, a hint of relief in her voice. “I was beginning to wonder if I was going to spend the night in this tree.”

She caught the branch she was sitting on and swung down to the one below. Eldan followed her, marveling at her agility, and her ability to move so well in the twilight gloom.

“Oh, I can think of worse places to spend the night than in a tree,” he replied lightly, as he lowered himself down onto the ground beside her.

“So can I, and I've probably been in most of them. Can we take to the road?” She dusted her hands off on her breeches, and unwound Hellsbane's reins from the snag she'd tethered the mare to.

“So far. Ratha's going on ahead. He says he's found a goat-track we can use if more of those patrols show up.”

She turned a sober face toward him. “I hope he's finding cover for us in case more of those—things—show up. I don't want to meet one of them out in the open with nowhere to hide.”

“No more do I.” He shuddered at the thought of it, and marveled at her courage, who'd encountered the creatures—whatever they were—alone, without panicking.

She's incredible,
he thought for the hundredth time, as he followed directly in Hellsbane's tracks.
I have to get her back to Valdemar. I have to. She'll never want to leave....

They're thinking at each other again,
Kero observed, trying not to cringe. With Eldan sitting and the Companion lying beneath a roof of living pine boughs, the Herald gazed deeply into Ratha's eyes, both of them oblivious to everything around them. The ground was invisible under a litter of pine needles that must date back ten or twenty years. They'd left Kero on guard while the two of them conferred. If Kero hadn't known the sky was clear, she'd have sworn there was a storm coming; it was that dark under this tree.

She looked away after a few moments, and decided that halfway up this same pine tree would be just about the best lookout point. She should be able to see quite a distance up the main valley from there. And she wouldn't have to watch Eldan and his Companion.

As usual, they'd traveled by night, stopping just before dawn to find a place to hole up in during the day. For the past night they'd been paralleling the main road down the center of a series of linked valleys. The closer they got to the Valdemar border, the less populated the countryside became—but the terrain was a lot rougher, and the alternatives to the main roads fewer. Their hiding place this time had been a little pocket-valley off the main vale. And it wasn't a place where Kero would have stopped if she'd had any choice. There was a shepherd's town—not a village, but a town, rating a main square, a marketplace, and the largest temple of the Sunlord Kero had seen yet—at the head of the valley. This had been the best they could do, and it hadn't been a terribly secure place to stay. A good-sized stand of tall pines with branches that drooped down to the ground ensured that there was no grass here; there was no water either, no one would stumble across them bringing his sheep to pasture. The pines themselves provided cover; one sheltered Hellsbane, one protected Ratha, and one kept the two of them hidden beneath the tentlike boughs.

But it was still open, and too close to that town to make any of them feel comfortable. Kero knew she slept lightly, and she was fairly certain the same could be said of Eldan and Ratha. After they woke, Eldan seemed preoccupied, and finally asked Kero to stand watch while he and his Companion talked.

Kero had a shrewd notion that strategy was not going to be the subject—that
she
was. She had gotten the impression more than once that Ratha liked her, but didn't entirely approve of her. Certainly the Companion wasn't likely to approve of her as a long-term liaison for his Herald.

He thinks a lot like his Herald,
she reflected, climbing through the scratchy pine boughs carefully, to avoid making the tree shake. They couldn't afford any carelessness; there had been too many near-escapes in the past few days. The hunters were getting thicker, and more, not less, persistent.

Somehow, in the next couple of days, they had to make a try at the Border. Which meant that parting from him was only days away. She settled herself on a sturdy limb, and blinked her burning, blurring eyes back into focus.
Blessed Agnira, what am I going to do?
Standing watch didn't occupy a great deal of her attention, which meant she had more than enough left over to worry.
I'm in love with this man. He's in love with me. Should be a happy ending in there somewhere, if this was only a ballad....

She bit her lip to keep from crying.
The whole relationship is impossible, that's all there is to it. It's all the same problems that I had with Daren, only worse, because I do love him. I want to be with him more than I've ever wanted any other person in my life.

But that was the key: any other person. Her independence had been dearly bought, and she wasn't about to give it up now.

If she went with him, giving up her position in the Skybolts, what would she do in Valdemar? The regular army might not take her, and if they did, she would undoubtedly find herself on the wrong end of rules and regulations every time she turned around. With her record, she could ask for concessions from a Company that she could never get from a regular army force. Her peculiar talents did not fit into the parameters of a regular army. She wasn't a foot or line soldier, she wasn't heavy or even light infantry, and she was in no way going to fit into heavy or light cavalry. She was a scout—well, that was a job for the foot soldier. She was a skirmisher—that was under the aegis of either light infantry (bow) or light cavalry (sword). She knew more about tactics than most of the regulation officers she'd met, and that would certainly earn her no points. Lerryn encouraged the input of his junior officers, but that simply wasn't so, outside of mercenary Companies.

That assumed they'd even take her in the first place; many regular armed forces wouldn't accept former mercs because they tended to have an adverse effect on discipline.

Which would leave me living on his charity. Not a chance. I won't ever put myself in that position again.
Despite the lump in her throat and the ache in her chest at the thought of parting from Eldan, the resolution remained.
Never. I have my own life, and I'm going to lead it.

He just didn't understand what could lead someone to fight for a living, and it didn't look as though he ever would. She'd tried to point out that if a relatively ethical person didn't do the fighting, that would leave it to unethical people—he'd stared at her as if she was speaking Shin‘a'in. For her part, she could not understand his fanatical devotion to an abstract: a
country.
What on earth was there about a piece of property that made it worth dying for? Never mind that territorial disputes were what paid for a merc's talents, more often than not—she still didn't understand it. In a way, she was as alien to him as one of those Karsite priestesses. She disturbed him more than they did, because he
knew
they were alien—she was the woman he loved, and seemed completely rational to him—until she would say something that completely eluded him, or
he
would say something that made no sense to her.

There were other differences, too; serious ones. Like his attitude toward Mindspeech. The way he shared his thoughts so freely with Ratha made her skin crawl and her shoulders tighten defensively.
No one
should be able to get inside your mind that closely.

Then there was that fanatical devotion to duty of his. He'd make it back to Valdemar if it killed him, just to get information back there personally. It
isn't
sane, she thought
grimly. It just is not sane. There are a dozen ways he could get that news back, and if he took all of them, that would virtually guarantee it would get there. Maybe not as quickly, but it would get there. But it has to be by his own personal hands....

He frightened her; as much as she loved him, she feared him, and feared for him. She was torn between that love and that fear, and when you added in her reluctance to place herself in a position where she would be dependent on him, there was only one conclusion she could come to.

She clutched the trunk of the tree in anguish, bark digging into her palm, the pain keeping tears out of her eyes. She fought to keep control, finally attaining it just as Eldan himself appeared under the tree, waving at her to come down.

She took a couple of deep breaths to make sure the lump wasn't going to return, and to steady her nerves. Then she waved back, grinning down at him, as if nothing was wrong.

The faint frown left his brow and he grinned in return.

 

A rock was digging a hole in Kero's stomach, but just now she didn't want to move to dislodge it. “Where are they all coming from?” Eldan whispered, as they watched yet another of the Sunlord's priestesses pause just below the entrance to their current hiding place. She pulled back the cowl of her robe, and stared up at the face of the cliff above her. It looked blank from that angle; the ledge they were lying on obscured the entrance, and Kero had seen it only because she had been up in a sturdy oak spying out the land when she'd spotted it. And it couldn't be reached from the floor of the valley; they'd had to backtrack and come up over the ridge to get down to it.

Hopefully that meant no one would look for it. Except the priestess, like all the others, seemed to have sensed
something.

From up here, they couldn't make out her features; they could just barely distinguish her face from her blonde hair. The scarlet robe she wore was a sure sign of high rank, though—the only rank above scarlet wore gold, and there were
never
women in gold robes. Against the green meadow below them, she looked like some kind of exotic flower.

“I have no idea where they're all coming from,” Kero whispered back. That was at least half a lie; at this point she was fairly sure they were tracking Need somehow. It would make sense, since neither she nor Eldan ever used unshielded Mindspeech. Since magic was forbidden, it followed that the priesthood had some way of detecting its use. And Need was created with magic; even when she wasn't actually doing something, she must be “visible” to someone capable of detecting magic. And no doubt she could hide herself, but she had to know she was endangering her bearer, and her bearer wouldn't know
that
until a priestess actually was in sight.

Kero held her breath, waiting. Surely
this
time the camouflage would break; they'd be spotted. This red-robe was the highest ranking priestess they'd seen yet; all the rest had been white-, blue-, or black-rank. Surely this time would mark the end.