Path of the Sun: A Novel of Dhulyn and Parno (53 page)

She was close enough now to see that one of the two remaining Horsemen was holding the smaller, dark-haired Mar in his arms, while the other—a blade in his hand—held the kneeling Gun by the hair. Dhulyn swung her bow off her back, pulled two arrows free from the quiver tied to her saddle. The man holding the blade reached down with it, bringing it closer to Gun’s throat. Mar struggled in the arms of her captor, almost succeeding in pulling herself free.

Dhulyn raised herself slightly until she was standing in the stirrups, legs flexed to minimize the effect of Bloodbone’s gallop, and took aim. This shot was easier than clearing the rings on Dorian’s ship, she reminded herself. Here, she was the only thing moving. She let out her breath, held, and shot. And shot again.

The first arrow passed through the forearm of the hand that held the knife, pinning it to the man’s upper thigh. The second went into the man’s left arm, just below the shoulder. He released Gun, and staggered back. By this time Dhulyn was in the camp, her sword pointed at the man who held a still struggling Mar in his arms.

“I think you should let go of her, don’t you?”

The man holding Mar kept his hands on her and his eyes on Dhulyn’s face long enough that Dhulyn thought he might hold to his pride and honor rather than admit defeat. She was just wondering if she could manage without actually killing him—or whether that in itself might be considered the greater insult—when he snatched his hands off Mar as though she were burning and stepped back two paces. As soon as the girl was free, she ran directly to Gun and began pulling off the nooses that encircled him.

Seeing her friends were taking care of themselves, Dhulyn drew sword and dagger, threw her leg over Bloodbone’s shoulders and slipped to the ground. “Do I have your parole?” she said to the boy who had been holding Mar.

“You have,” he said, backing away a further pace and looking around him. Both his horse and that of the other young man had stood their ground, well-trained beasts that they were, but he made no further move toward them, and Dhulyn turned her attention to the wounded man.

He looked away as she squatted next to him.

“What do you think now, Tel-Banion? Does she seem so whole and unbroken to you?”

“Hold still, you young fool. No need to make simple flesh wounds worse by squirming.” Dhulyn looked at the other boy. “Tel-Banion, is it? Come here and help hold him.”

“She’s going to kill me, don’t help her, Tel.”

“If I were going to kill you, you’d be dead,” Dhulyn observed. The wounds seemed as straightforward as she’d intended. “Will you give me your parole as well, or should I leave you skewered?” By the normal rules of her world, Dhulyn wasn’t bound to help him unless he surrendered, and it seemed from the young man’s hesitation that those rules might be different here. “By my oaths as a Mercenary Brother, if you surrender to me, I cannot hold you as slave or hostage, nor can I sell you for ransom. On the other hand, if you
don’t
surrender, I
am
permitted to either kill you or leave you to die.”

Still, it seemed that this young man also considered refusing her. “If
you
give me
your
parole now,” he said, clearly serious, “I will stop my Tribesmen from killing you when they have dealt with your friend.”

“Three against one are considered easy odds for Mercenary Brothers. We don’t get worried until there’s at least, oh, seven or eight against one of us. But I don’t mind waiting.”

“Josh!” Tel-Banion’s voice held a warning. Dhulyn looked from one to the other. Their expressions were very much alike.

Finally Josh licked his lips. “You have my parole,” he said.

“Here, brace his arm first,” Dhulyn instructed Tel-Banion. As soon as the boy had wrapped his hands around the wounded boy’s elbow, Dhulyn snapped off the fletching of the arrow and pulled the now clean shaft through the wound. This was the fleshy part of the upper arm, and there was very little bleeding. The wounded boy, she noted with approval, hadn’t even flinched, though it must have been quite painful.

“Mar, the wound cloths are in my left saddle pack.”

“I remember,” the girl said, and with a last touch on Gun’s hair went to Bloodbone. Both of her friends looked pale—understandable, Dhulyn thought—but there wasn’t time yet to find out why they were here.

“This other arrow—hold still, I said—will be trickier,” she said to Tel-Banion. “Hold his arm tight to his thigh while I break off the fletching. Then you’ll hold his leg and the arrow shaft while I pull his forearm free. Mar, stand ready to wrap a cloth around his forearm should there be any spray of blood, though, to be honest, I don’t believe I hit an artery. Are we ready?” Both Mar and the boy nodded. “Now.”

The fletching broken off, Dhulyn pulled Josh’s forearm free, and as she suspected, there was very little bleeding. She was examining the wound to the thigh when the sound of hoofbeats made the two Espadryni boys look away. The light that was dawning in their eyes soon faded, however, and Dhulyn was careful not to smile at their disappointment.

“Took you long enough,” she said to Parno, without looking around at him. A good show of confidence right now would make the young Espadryni easier to handle.

“If you were in a hurry, you should have let me kill them.”

At that Dhulyn did look around. Parno was leading the three horses, saddles empty, while their riders walked behind.

“Did you get their parole?” Dhulyn asked.

Parno made an elaborate show of looking around him. “Is your grandmother here? Is she in need of lessons?”

Dhulyn grinned. “Have a look at Gun while I finish here.” She estimated she had just time enough to finish removing the arrow from Josh’s thigh before his fellow Tribesmen arrived.

“I will have to cut around the head of the arrow to free it,” she told the boy. “It will hurt, but it is most important that you don’t move. The artery is here,” she indicated a line along his inner thigh. “But it’s best to take no chances.”

He swallowed, licked his lips, and nodded.

“Do you want bite down on this?” She held up a clean piece of arrow shaft.

“I won’t need it.”

Dhulyn shrugged. “Fine, they’re your teeth. Brace his leg, Tel-Banion, and, Mar, make a pad of that wound cloth, and as soon as I have the arrow head out, press down on the wound as firmly as you can.”

Luckily these were not war arrows, with their barbed heads, but razor-sharp hunting arrows. Dhulyn prodded delicately at the wound. The head had gone cleanly through Josh’s forearm and imbedded itself perhaps two fingerwidths into the meat of the young man’s thigh. Dhulyn found she had to enlarge the wound only very slightly to allow room enough to withdraw the arrow head. However, she had to be very careful that the head, as sharp as it was, would not slip deeper into the thigh, causing more bleeding and endangering the artery.

She looked first at the young Espadryni, Tel-Banion, then at Mar. When she had their nods, she began to cut. Her dagger was as sharp as the arrow head itself and made the cut cleanly, though blood immediately welled up into the space she had created. The leg trembled under her hands. “Steady,” she said, and the trembling stopped. She spread the cut wide with the hard edges of her fingertips and, gripping the arrow shaft with her left hand, yanked it free. Mar was already there with the pad of wound cloth, handing Dhulyn another piece with her free hand as she applied pressure.

“Lift the leg—keep the pressure on!” Dhulyn unrolled the wound cloth Mar had handed her and with a few deft turns had the wound wrapped and tied off.

Dhulyn stepped back, straightened to her feet, and found her arms full of Mar. She kissed the little Dove on the top of her head and moved her gently away, indicating Gun with a flick of her eyes. Dhulyn then looked around her, taking in the group of young men. The wounded Josh and the one who had helped her, Tel-Banion, looked to be the oldest in the group. Dhulyn frowned. Whether a scouting or hunting party, it was unusual to have so many young men without a seasoned oldster with them.

“Now, then, who is the leader of this band?” All eyes looked at the wounded boy. “And who wants to explain to us why you were trying to kill our friends?”

“
S
O HERE ALL the Marked are—are
murderers
?” Gun still looked pale, Parno thought, but he seemed to have regained his appetite.

“Keep in mind that we have only met the women of the Espadryni, but so, in a manner of speaking, we have been told.” Dhulyn spoke with the natural caution of the Brotherhood but in terms that the Scholar Gundaron would equally understand. In both their professions, facts weren’t facts until they’d been tested and proved. As the Common Rule said, “It’s neither sugar nor salt ’til it’s tasted.”

“And in your place, on the other side of Mother Sun’s Door, the Marked are as normal people are?” This was the group’s second-in-command, the young man called Tel-Banion. One of the others had used a magic of healing on Josh-Chevrie, who now slept to one side, rolled and padded with several blankets and horse pads. A fire had been built, water warmed, and tea made. Dhulyn had demonstrated once more her skill at shooting from horseback, and two prairie squirrels and a rabbit were roasting on the coals, next to a handful of flat cakes Mar had made from the flour and salt in Parno’s pack.

“Aside from the Mark itself, yes,” Dhulyn said. “They have the normal range of human emotions, love, hate, anger, pity, envy—”

“Stubbornness, vanity, conceit,” Parno added with the most innocent look he could manage.

“And let’s not forget patience, forbearance, tolerance, indulgence—” Dhulyn riposted sweetly.

“All of which mean the same thing,” Parno pointed out, “which is why Dhulyn Wolfshead is called ‘the Scholar.’ ”

“Rather because I need them in such a great supply.”

The young Espadryni men looked sideways at each other until Parno and Mar started laughing, and even Dhulyn smiled. Then the Horsemen relaxed, several of them also smiling—which was the whole point of the banter, Parno thought, out of character as it was for Dhulyn to put on a show for people. Anything to underscore and remind these young men that both she and Gun were, by the definitions of the Espadryni, whole and sound. Dhulyn looked to be feeling pleased with herself in any case, her face and smile as relaxed as he’d ever seen them. But just as he had that thought, she caught his eye and, still smiling warmly, flicked her glance to where Gun lay with his head in Mar’s lap.

Patience
, she was saying, and Parno knew it was as much a reminder for herself as it was aimed at him. As anxious as they were to learn what had brought their young friends through the Path of the Sun, it was more important to first secure the goodwill of these Espadryni. He had never realized before how much the Brotherhood took for granted the acceptance and respect they generally encountered. They did not usually have to earn the trust of every casually met stranger; their Mercenary badges were like Tarkin’s passes, allowing them entry practically everywhere they went.

“Perhaps after we have eaten, I can persuade my Partner to play his pipes for us.” Dhulyn’s words drew Parno’s attention back to the present. “He loves to learn new songs and to share the ones he has.”

They were eating, and both Gun and the now awake Josh-Chevrie had been given fens bark tea from Dhulyn’s own supply when the Espadryni on watch, eating while mounted not far away, gave a whistle in three long notes, sounding not unlike a high-pitched wolf.

“The Long Trees People.” Tel-Banion helped Josh-Chevrie to stand, and the other Espadryni immediately put down what food they might be holding—though one youngster simply stuffed his piece of flat cake whole into his mouth.

“You are not at war with them,” Parno said, though he and Dhulyn had both stood when the Horsemen did and, feeling the tension in the air, were automatically checking their weapons.

“No.” Josh-Chevrie cleared his throat. “But it is not our season to be in these lands. We must act as guests.”

Parno caught Dhulyn’s eye, and she nodded. She had picked up her sword from the ground when she stood, and now she hooked it to her belt, where it would be at hand without making her look actively aggressive. Mar was helping Gun to his feet, and when Dhulyn went to stand beside them, Parno took up a position on their other side, leaving space enough to swing his own sword if needed.

The scout, his horse barely trotting, entered the camp. “Only two,” he said, turning his mount around so that he was facing in the direction from which he’d come. The rest stayed on their feet, Parno noticed, perhaps for the same reason that he and Dhulyn had sheathed their swords. It would take them only a moment to whistle up their horses and mount, but to do so before the others arrived would not be acting like the guests they were.

It seemed only a moment until they heard hoofbeats slowing to a trot, and the two Long Trees Tribesmen entered the camp.

“Greetings, Josh-Chevrie.” The taller one had his head tilted to one side, and both were grinning. “Did you fall off your horse?”

“Had a small disagreement with these Mercenary Brothers,” Josh said, gesturing behind him. “But we are sorted now.”

“Parno Lionsmane, Dhulyn Wolfshead, it is good that you are here.” It wasn’t until the man greeted him that Parno realized the two Long Trees Tribesmen were Moon Watcher and his brother Star Watcher. It was clear from their faces, and the way they smiled at Dhulyn, that they had received the news. “Is it you who have brought the Cold Lake People?”

“We have no need of others to bring us,” Josh-Chevrie said, a hint of steel coming into his voice.

Parno took a breath, but at the flick of Dhulyn’s left thumb held his tongue.

“Our Singers sent us when they saw the fire’s smoke in the sky, to see for ourselves how bad the damage was and how far it might spread,” Josh-Chevrie said. “We were on our way back to our own territory after the rain when we found these two,” he gestured at Mar and Gun, then winced as his wound moved.