Two-Edged Blade

It made her feel like a creature of ill-omen, a harbinger of death. Something even the birds avoided—

Until she caught sight of a bold green-crested jay swooping down out of the trees to steal a bit of the ruined, discarded journey-bread.

Then she laughed, shakily, and cast off her feelings of impending disaster. Hellfires, she thought, as the mare picked her way between the trees, I’ve already had my quota of disasters. I should be about due for some good luck.

But the imp of the perverse wasn’t finished with her yet—or else, perhaps, there truly was a curse in operation. She found a path—a well-worn path leading from the river—and followed it just out of sight, afoot, leaving Hellsbane tethered in a safe place hidden by the underbrush. It was just as well that she hid the horse— because the path led to a village, one with formidable walls, and the village was placed across the only real road south.

She discovered, by watching the place for half the morning, that it was a very active village—the headquarters, so it seemed, for the local Karsite patrols. The riders coming in and going out were not in uniform, but they rode with military discipline and precision, and Kero twice saw priestly robes among them.

She cursed to herself, but crawled back to where she had left Hellsbane and retraced her steps to her cold camp, where she destroyed every sign that a scout had been there. There was no hiding the fact that someone had been here, but she did her best to make it look as if the camp might have been the work of children.

I only hope that Karsite younglings run off to play soldier in the woods the way we did, she thought grimly, as she sent Hellsbane picking her way through the forest, trying to keep her on things that wouldn’t show hoof-prints—stone, pine needles, and the like. She’d muffled the mare’s hooves in leather bags, which should confuse things a little, but Hellsbane hated the “boots” and Kero wouldn’t be able to keep them on her for very long.

The river turned west, but the terrain forming its bank worsened and they had to leave it and move farther east. By mid-afternoon they hit another trail. This one also had the tracks of horse hooves on it, but they were broad hooves, unshod, and hopefully marked only the passage of farm animals.

Late afternoon brought increasing signs of habitation, and once again Kero tethered the mare deep in the brush and went on alone, afoot.

The territory away from the river was turning drier; there were woods down in the valleys, but the hills themselves supported mostly grass and bushes. She climbed a tree when she picked up sounds of humans at work, and realized, as she surveyed this newest village from the shelter of its highest boughs, that this change of vegetation was going to make traveling even more difficult. It would be hard to stay hidden, and impossible to disguise the mare as anything but what she was.

This village was much smaller than the first, and did not appear to be harboring any of the Karsite forces other than a single priest. He herded every soul in the village into the center of town as the sun went down, leading them in a long—and evidently boring—religious service. Kero snickered a little, watching some of the worshipers nodding off in the middle of the priest’s main speech.

When the last edge of the scarlet sun finally sank below the horizon, he let them go. They lost no time in seeking their own little cottages.

Kero watched them until full dark, then went back for Hellsbane, satisfied that no one would be stirring out of doors except to visit the privy. As darkness covered the cottages, her sharp ears had caught the sounds of bars being dropped over doorways all across the village. These people feared the dark and what it held—therefore darkness was her friend.

Therefore I won’t be getting any sleep tonight, she added with a sigh, as she took Hellsbane’s reins in her hand and moved cautiously toward the sleeping village, walking on the side of the road and ready to pull the mare into cover at the first sign of life other than herself. I wonder how they get the troops to travel at night if the common folk are so afraid of the dark?

Then, again, maybe the troops are what they’re afraid of.

The village itself was not the kind of untidy sprawl of houses she was used to; this place was a compact huddle of thirty or forty single-storied cottages, mostly alike, ranged on three sides of the village square. The fourth side was taken up by four larger homes, and what Kero presumed to be the temple, and the entire village was surrounded by an area that had been cleared entirely of brush and trees, leaving nothing but grass. The arrangement made it possible for her to skirt the edge of the village without leaving the shelter of the trees, and still see anything moving among the houses.

The place was uncanny, that much was certain. Once again she had the feeling that there were eyes out there, but this time she also had the feeling those eyes were somehow missing her. There was definitely something in that village; something that held the inhabitants silent and hidden in their houses, something that scanned the night for anything that didn’t belong there. Like me, she thought, glad she’d put Hellsbane’s “boots” back on, and equally glad that the mare was too well-trained to give her away with a whicker to the farm beasts. It’s looking for something like me, only it can’t find me. Maybe—maybe Need’s finally doing something. Damned if I’m going to drop shields to find out!

It seemed to take half the night to creep past the village; and once past, she didn’t relax her vigilance in the least. She stayed in the shadow of the trees for furlongs, then she mounted the mare and rode out on the road to the east, and she didn’t leave that cover, not even when the village was long past.