Oathblood

'Stomach grippe? What are you thinking of?' Kira asked sharply.

'Remember my black beads? The ones Kethry told me never to let the baby play with, because they'd make him sick? They took my good jewels, but not those.' Meri rummaged in her pack again, and came up with three long ropes of small, dark beads. 'They're not really beads, they're seeds, and Jadrek helped me to find out what they were. They don't taste like anything, and if we eat three or four, we'll get sick. Then they'll have to stop to let us -- be sick. Won't they?'

Kira looked at her twin with sudden admirahon. I would be willing to get sick to slow everything up-but I wouldn't have thought Meri would! 'I think so,' she said, with another thought coming into her mind -- but one she would save, until she had a better idea of what their situation was. 'It's worth a try.'

* * *

Blood everywhere. I'd thought I would never have to deal with a situation like this one again. Tarma surveyed the carnage impassively, but with a sinking feeling in her heart. The bodies of the ten guards that had lately left the school with Meri and Kira now sprawled in ungainly poses over about a quarter of an acre of trampled snow. Three were down on the road itself, four lay in a ragged line under their dead and fallen horses and had clearly never gotten the chance to struggle free before they, too, were killed, and the remaining three were in a line behind them, where they had made a final stand afoot. Blood stained the white snow red everywhere, and liberal trails of more blood heading off to the south and west showed that the kidnappers had not gotten away completely unscathed.

But there were no dead that were not of the guards in Tilden's livery, so if any of the attackers had died, their bodies had been carted away. A bad sign. Whoever planned this was well organized, well armed, and with a lot of men. And it wasn't a simple bandit-raid. Not one guard had been left alive to send word of the massacre. Those horses that weren't dead were grouped together, heads down, exhausted -- not carried off with the bandits. The two ponies that Meri and Kira had ridden out on stood under a tree beside the road, sadly nosing through the snow and biting at the withered grass they found there.

Nobody actually stopped to loot either, not even the gear on the dead and living horses. All the arms and armor, all the packs that belonged to the dead men, it's all still here. Just the girls and their packhorse, that's all that were taken, and I have to wonder if the packhorse wasn't grabbed just because they didn't want to take the time to unload the girls' stuff off him. If we hadn't had Need, nobody would have known this happened until some trader or farmer stumbled over the bodies -- and even then, no one would know that the girls were missing. Until Tilden came looking for them, that is.

'Where now?' she asked Kethry.

'South and west,' she replied immediately. 'More west than south.'

Well, that certainly corresponded with those telltale blood trails.

Tarma sucked on her lower lip, and glanced up at the sky to the west. Behind the gray pall of clouds, the sun shone feebly, no more than a finger's-breadth above the horizon. The air was sharply cold, too cold for snow at this point, so for a while they could follow the clear trail left by the kidnappers. It would be dark soon -- and no time to act on her hunch that the kidnappers were about to drive straight south. At least, not in time to cut them off.

'Stay on the pillion, Furball,' she told a weary Warrl behind her. 'I'll track them as long as I can see, then you take over until we can't ride anymore.'

But just as twilight faded, that became easier to do, for the tracks of the running horses in the unbroken snow were joined by the tracks of wheels. Warrl raised his nose for a quick investigation, as Tarma read the churned-up snow. The blood-trails ended where the wheel marks began, so the kidnappers had paused long enough to rough-bandage their wounds.

:New men, here. They waited for some time while the others created their ambush and sprung it.:

'So they had a wagon ready and waiting, and that's where they put the girls.' She gritted her teeth. 'Smart. You keep them completely under control and you don't have to worry about someone accidentally seeing them. Hard to explain a little girl trussed up like a chicken for the pot, but no one is likely to be curious about a prison- wagon. I wish to hell I knew who these people were! It would tell me a lot about why they've done this and what they want.'

'Surely ransom,' Kethry ventured, but Tarma shook her head.

'Not necessarily, she'enedra. This could be political, an attempt to force Tilden into a position he wouldn't otherwise take by holding his girls.' She used a little mental discipline to keep herself calm so that she could think properly, as her battlemare responded to her unease by shifting her weight and looking around for the danger. 'It could be political in another way, to make an example out of the girls, to show how ruthless these people can be. Hellfires, if there are still any of Char's old allies around, I'd count on them to be that ruthless. It could be religious; the Triune Goddess Priests have been getting their noses out of joint since there isn't an official state religion anymore.'

'It doesn't even have to have anything to do with Rethwellan,' came the small, uncertain voice from behind her. As she turned to peer at Jadrie through the gloom, the girl swallowed but looked straight into Tarma's eyes and bravely continued her thought. 'Merili is supposed to marry the Prince of Jkatha. And the kidnappers are going south. Maybe someone wants to force Queen Sursha to do something to get Meri back safe. You know she'd have to do something, especially if it's Jkathans that took Meri and Kira.'