By the Sword (44 page)

She wanted to “look” back at her pursuers, tempted to use her Gift for the first time in a long time—

And stopped herself just in time.

That isn't me,
she realized, urging Hellsbane into greater speed as they scrambled down a gravel-covered slope.
Something out there wants me to use my Gift, probably so they can find me. Or catch and hold me until they come.

She fought down panic; Hellsbane was a good creature, and bright beyond any ordinary horse, but if
she
panicked, so would Hellsbane, and the warsteed might bolt. If Hellsbane took it into her head to flee, Kero wasn't sure she'd be able to stop her until she'd run her panic out.

And that could end in her broken neck, or the mare‘s, or both.

Kero kept Hellsbane in the cover of the trees, even though this meant more effort than riding in the open. She looked automatically behind her as they topped the next hill, and saw not one, but two parties of pursuers; both coming down off the slope she'd just left, and both parties so confident of catching her now that they weren't even trying to hide. They couldn't see her, but they could see her trail; she wasn't wasting any time trying to hide it.

They were perhaps a candlemark's ride from her, if she stopped right now. The temptation to leave cover and make a run for it was very great. If she let Hellsbane run, she might be able to lose them as darkness fell.

Assuming that
their
horses weren't fresh.

Hellsbane had been going since last night, and she couldn't do much of a run at this point.

They could. And would.

Kero sent the mare across a section of open trail when they dropped out of sight, hoping to get across it before they got back into viewing range. This was one of the worst pieces of trail she'd hit yet; barely wide enough for a horse, bisecting a steep slope, with a precipitous drop down onto rocks on one side and an equally precipitous shale cliff on the other.

No place to go if you slipped, and nowhere to hide if you were being followed.

She breathed a sigh of relief as they got into heavier cover before the hunters came into view. She hadn't wanted to rush the mare, but her back had felt awfully naked out there.

Thunder growled overhead; Kero looked up, pulling Hellsbane up for a moment under the cover of a grove of scrub trees just tall enough to hide them. She hadn't been paying any attention to the weather, but obviously a storm had been gathering while she fled westward, because the sky was black in the west, and the darkness was moving in very fast-How fast, she didn't quite realize, until lightning hit the top of a pine just ahead of her, startling Hellsbane into shying and bucking, and half-blinding her rider. The thunder that came with it
did
deafen her rider.

And the downpour that followed in the next breath damned near
drowned
her rider.

It was like standing under a waterfall; she couldn't see more than a few feet in front of her. She dismounted and automatically peered through the curtain of rain back down the trail behind her—

Just in time to see it disappear, melting beneath the pounding rain. She stared in complete disbelief as the trail literally vanished, leaving her pursuers no clue as to where she had gone, or where she was going.

In fact, the part of the trail she and the mare were standing on was showing signs of possible disintegration....

Taking the hint, she took Hellsbane's reins in hand and began leading her through the torrent of water. Streams poured down the side of the hill and crossed the trail; the water was ankle-deep, and carried sizable rocks in its churning currents. She found that out the hard way, as one of them hit her ankle with a
crack
that she felt, rather than heard.

She went down on one knee, eyes filling with tears at the pain—but this was not the time or the place to stop, no matter how much it hurt. She forced herself to go on, while icy water poured from the sky and she grew so numb and chilled that she couldn't even shiver.

And grateful for the rescue; too grateful even to curse that errant rock.
This—thing—came up so fast—
she thought, peering at the little she could see of the footing ahead of her, leading Hellsbane step by painful step.
It
—
could almost be—supernatural.

In fact, a suspicion lurked in the back of her mind perhaps Need had had something to do with it. There was no way of telling, and it
could
all be just sheer coincidence.

Still, there was no doubt that it had saved her.

Always provided she could find some shelter before it washed her away.

I'm glad Hellsbane can see, because I can't.
Kerowyn's eyelids were practically glued shut with fatigue. She rode into the Skybolts' camp in a fog of weariness so deep that she could hardly do more than stick to Hellsbane's saddle. The mare wasn't in much better case; she shambled, rather than walked, with her head and tail down, and Kero could feel ribs under her knee instead of the firm flesh that should be there.

She rode in with the rain, rain that had followed her all the way from beyond the Karsite Border. Or maybe she had been chasing a storm the entire time; she wasn't sure. All she did know was that the rain had saved her, and continued to save her as she traveled—washing out her tracks as soon as she made them, for one thing. It also seemed as if it was keeping those supernatural spies of the Karsites from taking to the air, for another; at any rate she hadn't felt those “eyes” on her from the moment the rain started to come down. And last of all, the mud and rain had completely exhausted her pursuers' horses, who had none of Hellsbane's stamina.

From the exact instant when the first storm hit, she'd been able to make her soggy way across Karse virtually unhindered. She hadn't been
comfortable,
in fact, she spent most of the time wet to the skin and numb with cold, but she hadn't had to worry about becoming a guest in a Karsite prison.

Her only real regret: she'd had to ride Hellsbane after the first storm slackened; that rock hadn't broken her ankle, but it had done some damage. A bone-bruise, she thought. She wasn't precisely a Healer, but that was what it felt like. She'd hated putting that much extra strain on the mare, but there was no help for it.

Luck or the sword or some benign godlet had brought her across the border at one of the rare Menmellith bor derposts. She'd introduced herself and showed her Mercenary Guild tag, and her Skybolt badge; she'd hoped for a warm meal and a dry place to sleep, but found cold comfort among the army regulars.

At least they'd told her where the Skybolts had gone to ground; she'd ridden two days through more heavy rains to get there, so numb that she wasn't even thinking about what she was likely to find.

The camp didn't seem much smaller; she'd feared the worst, that half or three-fourths of the Skybolts were gone. But it was much shabbier; the tents were make do and secondhand, and the banner at the sentry post was clumsily sewn with a base of what
looked
like had once been someone's cloak.

The rain slacked off as they reached the perimeter of the camp itself. Hellsbane halted automatically at the sentry post; the sentry was a youngster Kero didn't recognize, probably a new recruit. He seemed very young to Kero.

And he looked eager and a little apprehensive as he eyed her.

She dragged out her Skybolt badge and waved it at him. “Scout Kerowyn,” she croaked, days and nights of being cold and wet having left her with a cough and a raspy throat. “Reporting back from the Menmellith Border.”

Before the boy could answer, there was a screech from beyond the first row of tents, and a black-clad wraith shot across the camp toward her, vaulting tent ropes and the tarp-covered piles of wood beside each tent.

“Kero!” Shallan screamed again, and heads popped out of some of the tents nearest the sentry post. Hellsbane was so weary she didn't even shy; she just flicked an ear as Shallan reached them and grabbed Kero's boot. “Kero, you're
alive!”

“Of course I'm alive,” Kero coughed, slowly getting herself out of the saddle. “I feel too rotten to be dead.”

By now more than heads were popping out of the tents and she and Shallan had acquired a small mob, all familiar faces Kero hadn't realized she missed until now. They crowded around her, shoving the poor young sentry out of their way, all of them laughing (some with tears in their eyes), shouting, trying to get to Kero to hug her or kiss her—it was a homecoming, the kind she'd never had.

She looked around in surprise, some of her tiredness fading before their outpouring of welcome. She hadn't known so many people felt that strongly about her, and to her embarrassment, she found herself crying, too, as she returned the embraces, the infrequent kisses, the more common back-poundings and well-meant curses.
They're family. They're my family, more than my own blood is. This is what Tarma was trying to tell me, the way it is in a good Company; this is what makes Lerryn a good Captain.

“I have to report!” she shouted over the bedlam. Shallan nodded her blonde head, and seized her elbow, wriggling with determination through the press of people. Gies showed up at Hellsbane's bridle and waved to her before leading the mare off to the picket line.

Word began to pass, and the rest parted for her when they realized what she'd said; a merc unit didn't stand on much protocol, but what it did, it took seriously. Somewhere in the confusion someone got the bright idea that they should all meet at the mess tent; the entire mob headed in that direction, while Shallan took Kero off in the direction of the Captain's tent.

“I've got the legendary good news and bad news.” They slogged through mud up to their ankles, and Kero blessed Lerryn's insistence on camp hygiene. In a morass like this, fevers and dysentery were deadly serious prospects unless a camp was kept under strict sanitary conditions. The blonde looked up as the gray sky began dripping again, scowling in distaste. “So what do you want first?”

“The bad, and make it the casualties.” Kero sighed and braced herself to hear how many friends were dead or hurt beyond mending; this was the last thing she wanted to hear, but the very first she needed to to know.

Who am I going to be mourning tonight?
she asked herself, the thought weighing down her heart the way the sticky clay weighed down her steps.

“Right.” Shallan grimaced. “That's the worst of the bad, because number one was Lerryn and number two was his second, Icolan. In fact, most of the officers didn't make it out. It's like every one of them had a great big target painted on his back; I've never seen anything like it.” She glanced over to see how Kero was taking the news—and Kero didn't know quite what to say or do. It was just too much to take all at once.

She felt stunned, as if someone had just hit her in the stomach and it hadn't begun to hurt quite yet.
Lerryn? Dear Agnetha
—it didn't seem possible; Lerryn was everything a good Captain had to be. There was no way he should be dead.... “He? His?” she said sharply, as the sense of what she'd just heard penetrated. Shallan never worded anything by accident. “Does that mean—”

Shallan's head bobbed, her short hair plastered to her scalp by the rain. “Both the women made it. The only problem is that the higher-ranked one is—”

“Ardana Flinteyes.” Kero took in a deep breath and held it. That was bad news for the Company, or so Kero judged, and she was fairly certain Shallan felt the same way. Ardana should by rights never have risen above the rank she'd held before the rout.
She's a good fighter, but she's got no head for strategy, she blows up over the least little thing and stays hot for months, and—I don't like her ethics. No, that's not true. I don't like the fact that she doesn't seem to have many.
“So Ardana's a top-ranker? Not over—”

“Worse,” Shallan said grimly, then looked significantly at the Captain's tent, with its tattered standard flying overhead. It wasn't the crossed swords anymore. It was flint and steel striking and casting a lightning bolt.

“She's the Captain?” Kero whispered, appalled by the prospect.

Shallan nodded, once.

Kero took a deep breath. The Company had to go to someone. At least Ardana had experience, and with this Company. It was better than disbanding. Well, it was
probably
better than disbanding. She stopped where she was and stared at the new standard, oblivious to the rain pouring down on her. After all, she was already soaked.

“The good news is that all the scouts made it,” Shallan said hurriedly, as if to get her mind off the uneasy prospect of Ardana as Captain. “And I've got a tent, a whole one; it fits four and there's only me and Relli. You can come on in with us, we don't mind.”

Kero sighed; she'd rather not have shared with anyone, but she doubted there was a choice. It was shelter, and the company was good. She'd rather have her own—but maybe she could manage that in the next couple of days. Obviously the Company had lost all of the equipment left behind during the rout.

“I'll take you up on that,” she said, surprised at the gratitude she heard in her voice beneath the weariness. She straightened her back and squared her shoulders. “Might as well get this over with while I can still stand.”