Doom's Break (25 page)

And now? He was confused, and curious about her presence here, in the Emperor's quarters.

"You?" he said clumsily.

She had seen him; she knew who he was. Her eyes were unreadable. She moved to step around him. He put up a hand to stop her. For a moment his fingers rested on her arm.

Simona's eyes flashed fire at him, and his own anger was rekindled.

"You wear no covering in public?" he said.

For a long moment she stared at him, as if weighing her words carefully.

"You cannot understand," she said at last. "But I refuse purdah. I am my own person. I do not belong to any man."

Then she was gone, twisting away and passing through the inner flap of the tent. Rukkh could not go back, the guards were already in place. Then it hit him that she had gone into the Emperor's tent without even a challenge from the guards.

Shaking his head, Rukkh hurried back through the lines, making sure to return to his own squad's position from the direction opposite that of the Emperor's tent. He was to be the Emperor's trusted informant, and he must not jeopardize this gift from on high.

Yet there was an edge to his feelings. He had long dreamed of that red-mark girl, seeing her on the women's deck of the old
Growler
. He had hoped to one day win her hand and make her his bride. Together they would have founded a family here in the new land where such things as birthmarks were less important than the ability to bear children and tame the wilderness.

Now that dream was gone and the girl was a woman and taken by the Emperor. Well, at least it showed that Rukkh had good taste when it came to women! He spat on the ground. What was done was done, and he would give it no more mind.

"Good tasty beetle—try?" Chenk had caught another leaf hopper and proffered it to Thru.

He grimaced, then shrugged and took the big bug. Insects were not his preferred food. With all those legs and things they felt weird in one's mouth. But they were edible in a pinch. Thru crunched the thing up, finding that it tasted a little like fried bushpod but oilier. He tried to ignore the legs and feelers as he chewed them up.

Iallia wrinkled her nose in disgust. She was hungry, but she was holding out for some berries, or anything but bugs. Iallia had led a privileged life and had never known hunger before this nightmare.

Mukka had returned from her ramble through the laurel bushes with another big hopper. "Eat good beetle, tasty," said Mukka, offering it to her. Iallia shuddered and turned away. Thru could not resist a grin, though he was concerned that Iallia keep up her strength. They still had days of hard marching ahead of them.

They were traveling west along the north bank of the river Dristen. They had left the mountains behind and were wending through the lower foothills. Thru estimated that they could reach the coast in five or six more days, depending on the pace they were able to keep up.

He knew a village was not too far ahead, where he'd found some dried bushpod curd before. But until they reached it, they had nothing except what they and the chooks could find. Thru had lost his bow and quiver in the plunge over the falls—indeed, he counted himself fortunate to have retained his knife—but he had fashioned a little sling, and with some of the roundest pebbles he could find he'd hunted for small game. His efforts had brought them a couple of small birds, a squirrel that was astonishingly tough, and one young rabbit, which he let Iallia eat mostly since she couldn't stomach the insects.

Roaming through the woods like this with chooks had proved a revelation. Thru had known the big, intelligent birds all his life, but he had never hunted alongside them for food. They didn't miss a thing when it came to bugs or useful leaves and berries. There was a constant murmur from them everytime they found a clearing filled with bushes and small trees:

"This leaf is good to eat, but that one is bad."

"These berries are good, but not too many or you be sick."

"Eat this! Very good."

Even Thru had blanched at the big spider with yellow veins across its back held up in Mukka's proud beak. "Uh, no, not just now," he'd managed. Mukka blinked, then gobbled down the tasty morsel while Thru allowed himself a little shudder. Hoppers were one thing, but spiders were still too strange for his palate.

Still, along the way, Thru had learned to try half a dozen wild foods produced by the cheerful chooks. He remembered hearing his grandmother and mother talk about them, things like toe tree buds and the yellowed shoots of the lippinstalk. Grandmother had used lippinstalk to wrap up pats of butter. She said it was good to eat, too, but Thru's mother never cooked it. She said it was "wild food" and not fit for civilized tables.

Thru had learned to relish the salty, fat flavor of the lippinstalk shoots as well as the creamy inner pulp of toe tree buds and the sour inner bark of the kork tree.

They had made pretty good time, and they had seen no sign whatsoever of the enemy, neither men nor pyluk. Whatever they were up to back in the mountains, they were still busy with it.

Before midday, they reached the village Thru remembered. The chooks had passed through it, too, during their flight up the valley.

"We found nuts there, but no people. All mots, all chooks gone to the hills. We go to the hills, too."

Thru had learned that they had become separated from the people of their village quite early during the flight. They had missed the point where the villagers turned away from the river and climbed into the hills above. The leading rooster, Chenk, was not the brightest spark in the fire. He had kept going up the river, hoping to find another group of refugees who could tell them something about their own village mots and chooks. Alas, they were behind the wave as the news had gone up the valley at great speed, triggering instant flight.

In the village they found flour, some sour curd, and a big store of hazelnuts. They made quickbread and roasted it in an oven, while Iallia fried the curd with some onions she found hanging in someone's kitchen.

Everyone had left in a great hurry. There were utensils left out and even uneaten meals abandoned on tables to mold and insects.

While they ate, Thru searched for a bow and some arrows. He was soon rewarded. In a sawyer's house he found an old but serviceable bow in a closet. Right next to it, hanging from a peg, was a quiver with ten good shafts, all with stone hunting points on them. He tried them out in the center of the village, placing three within a finger's breadth of each other on the front door of the tavern from fifty paces. The bow string was fresh, even if the bow itself was a little old.

When they'd eaten and filled packs with nuts for the rest of the journey they set out once more. They followed the river road now. From here on it would offer the quickest route to the coast, and with the supply of nuts they would not need to forage for a while.

The road turned westward as the river swung round in a broad curve into a wider section of its valley. The forest of oak and beech spread out wide on both sides. They hurried along, pushing tired legs to give their all.

After an hour of steady marching, Thru and Chenk felt the vibrations in the ground at virtually the same moment.

"Something comes," said Chenk, turning to the mot with anxious chook eyes.

"Horse animal," said Thru in an instant. "Hide. Quickly."

They scrambled up the bank. Iallia was struggling, so Thru picked her up and pitched her over his shoulder as he dug his feet in and powered them up and into the trees. He dropped her, threw himself down alongside, and peered back up the road.

They were only just quick enough. Around the bend far back up the road a pair of horsemen appeared, riding fast.

The chooks had vanished, Thru noticed. Then he saw they'd dropped a small sack of hazelnuts beside the trail. It was half hidden in leaf litter, but it might still be seen.

He strung the bow and quickly nocked an arrow.

The horsemen were coming. The sound of the horse hooves drummed on the road, scattering gravel. The men were scanning the road as they came, and Thru had the sudden chilling understanding that they were searching for him and Iallia.

Could they have tracked them?

Then he realized with a shiver that pyluk could. Pyluk could track anything that moved through the forest.

He kept the bow down but at the ready while the horsemen rode past. Hard-faced men, wearing leather hats and breastplates, they had bows and swords. He had fought men just like them many times.

Then they were past and they didn't slow down.

Thru let go the breath he'd been holding. They had missed the little sack of nuts.

He waited a few seconds, then darted out quickly to grab the sack. Others might be following the first two riders, and they might be more observant.

They were forced to move through the trees, and they traveled much less quickly than before. The chooks formed up on the flanks, Chenk and Mukka to the left, closer to the road, while Dunni and Pikka took the right. Iallia did her best not to step on dry branches and make noise. With Thru encouraging her, she did quite well. Their flight from captivity had already sharpened her survival skills considerably.

They went on like this for another hour. Thru judged the sun was halfway down the sky. They had kept well away from the road for the most part, but now they were forced closer as the valley narrowed and the river plunged down rapids for a few miles in a shallow canyon. The sides were breached by wide gulleys choked with alder and birch. Their progress was slowed negotiating these gulleys, and the footing was tricky in many places, for the rocks were covered in slippery moss.

At intervals they halted while Thru scouted forward, closer to the road, looking for any sign of the two riders. But nothing showed itself. Nor had they heard any other parties of riders come down the valley. Thru was tempted to return to the road; if they stayed in the thickets, it might take weeks to reach the coast.

He came around another bend. The river broke out of the canyon into a wider valley once more, but for the first section the road ran directly through an alder swamp. One look at the densely packed trees, the bogs and muddy pools, and Thru decided they would risk crossing the swamp on the road. On the far side, they could go back to working their way along through the woods.

"We must use the road for a mile or so. The bogs would take all day to negotiate. But when we get out there we have to hurry. Don't want to be spotted if we can help it. Those two riders may have gone all the way back to the coast, who knows? Perhaps the pyluk have eaten all the other men and horse animals. Nothing would surprise me by this point."

They readied themselves and then moved out onto the road, first along the side, moving from cover to cover as long as possible.

Soon enough the ground opened out into the bog. The alders rose in a thick mass, but the road ran virtually straight across, and Thru could see clearly right across to the far side of the swamp.

Thru studied the woods there, but saw nothing to give him further pause.

"Come on!" he cried and led them out onto the road.

As they ran, the chooks surprised him again by the determined pace that they maintained, their heads down, lunging forward on long strides of their legs. Iallia was the one struggling to keep up. Thru stayed with her, encouraging her to keep up a steady jog. It seemed to take an eternity crossing that open space. But at last they edged up a slight slope out of the bog and back under the trees. The road curved down to find the northern bank of the river, with which it kept company through the valley to the next village, some miles farther downstream.

Thru felt a surge of elation. They'd made it across the bog. Now they could make reasonable time under the cover of the trees. He decided to trust to their luck, and so they stayed on the road.

It was nearly their undoing. The attack came as a surprise despite all his care. An arrow whipped past his face, and he felt the wind of its passage. Another arrow sank into Pikka's chest, and she fell down with a squawk of agony. Thru saw the two riders suddenly urge their mounts out from between the trees nearby. The men had swords in hand. With whoops they came cantering down the short slope to the road.

The chooks fled in panic. Iallia tripped over her own feet and fell. Thru advanced to meet them alone.

As they came on, he held position between them. Then, at the last moment, he sprang to his right, putting himself on the far side of the horse from that rider's sword arm. That also drew their attention away from Iallia, who was just getting back to her feet.

The man swung his sword over in a practiced move, however, and should have cut Thru's neck to the bone except that Thru did not stay still to be cut. He swung aside, dodging the slashing steel, then took Iallia under the arm and shoved her toward the trees.

The riders had halted in a cloud of dust. Then they turned their mounts and came back, whooping some more.

Hidden from their view, Thru took his bow from around his neck and fumbled an arrow to the string. The riders came confidently up the slope, swords twirling in their hands.

Thru's arrow sliced out of the shadow and sank into the leather breastplate of the leading rider. Alas, the stone point did not penetrate all the way, and the rider received a shock but no more. He kept coming.

Thru was forced to dive for safety under a bush. The horse went by. The sword sliced through the bush but missed Thru by a hair's breadth.

He rolled out from under. The other rider had caught up with Chenk. The sword flashed high, but Thru was too busy dodging to follow what happened next. His ankle turned on a root, and he went down on one knee. The horse struck at him, and even as he dove to the side of the tree he felt a heavy blow on his right shoulder. He rolled, wincing from the pain.

The rider was trying to get the horse to trample him, and Thru did not have time to get back on his feet. Then Iallia came whirling in with a fallen branch in her hands. She thrust it up into the man's face. He gave a startled cry and toppled backward, falling from the saddle. Thru twisted aside from the horse's hooves, got to his feet, and hurled himself at the man.