There was no other warning. Before even the horse's rider had a chance to do anything, a guard at the front of the escort suddenly screamed and fell off his horse.
For all of her reading, this was the first time that Kira had ever seen a man die, and this one was dying right in front of her; at first, it didn't seem real. Before she could do more than stare stupidly at the arrow in his back and the spreading scarlet stain in the snow as he writhed there, two more of the guards made horrid gurgling sounds and fell off, too, with arrows sticking out of their throats.
She sat there on her fat little pony, paralyzed with a mixture of fear and horror, wanting to throw up and run away at the same time. The only thing that came into her mind was that there was never any blood in her daydreams....
Meri screamed, startling her out of her shock, at about the same time as chaos erupted all around them.
Their ponies were shoved aside by more of their guards, as the men made a wall of themselves around their charges. But that wall didn't last long; ignoring armored men, the attackers cut down the horses with their arrows, sending screaming animals to drop under their riders. Behind the volley of arrows came a charge, then there were frantically running men and horses, screaming and shouting, and swords cutting everywhere. Confused and frightened, the pony only thought to flee; he bolted between two screeching, bleeding horses into the first open space he saw.
Suddenly she was sitting on her pony in the middle of the open road, and there wasn't anybody standing protectively between her and a rough-clad man who was riding straight for her.
She thought, belatedly, of her knife at her belt -- her pony tried to bolt as she gave him confused signals -- then the stranger was right on top of her. He snatched her out of her saddle with an impact that drove all the breath out of her and made her see stars.
He paused just long enough to rob her of her knife, then dumped her across the front of his saddle, facedown -- as the horse galloped off, she thought she was going to be sick. The pommel of his saddle jolted into her stomach, and she had a terrible time just getting a full breath between jolts. The whole world was reduced to lashing hair and snow-covered ground, and the pain of an ever-increasing number of bruises.
The next thing she knew, he'd stopped as abruptly as he'd started. He grabbed her under the arms before she got a breath, and threw her toward a -- wagon? Whatever, she was flying through the air, straight for it. Before she had time to brace herself, she landed inside a darkened boxlike structure, and hit her head against the wooden floor. Meri landed on top of her in the next moment, then something bulky and heavy flew in after them. The door they'd been tossed through slammed shut, there was the sound of a bar dropping in place over the door. Before either of them could move, the box began jolting around, bouncing and bruising them both unmercifully to the sound of wheels and galloping hooves.
That was all the tiny, still-sane part of her could think, as she and Meri clung to each other, and screamed and cried until they were hoarse, sore of eye and of throat, as well as battered and bruised.
Eventually they managed to brace themselves so that they weren't bouncing around quite so badly, and long after they'd cried themselves out, the wagon finally slowed to a reasonable pace.
'What happened?' Meri asked tearfully, in a hoarse whisper.
'I th-think we've been kidnapped,' Kira stammered back.
'But-why?' Meri wailed. 'Who would want to kidnap us?'
Kira ignored that question; obviously their father was under the impression that someone would want to, or he wouldn't have sent guards to escort them home for the holidays. She knew, beneath her own fright and nausea, that somehow she would have to come up with better questions than that. You had to have questions before you could have answers -- and oh, she needed answers now!
A voice out of memory interrupted her chaotic, fear-filled rambling.
'Think things through.'
She started; for a moment the memory of Tarma's voice was so clear that it seemed as if she'd really heard the words.
'We have to think, Meri,' she whispered fiercely. 'Like Tarma always says.' She screwed up her face in concentration, and tried to dredge up other memories that might help.
'Start with what you know, and go on to what your resources are. Don't waste the first few moments on speculation.'
She licked her lips. What she knew -- well, they'd been kidnapped. They were in a wagon, being hauled
