the horses strung on leads, mounted up, and pushed along the trail. A crashing in the brush alerted him. He swung in the saddle, glimpsed movement to his right, felt a kiss on the breeze, and slashed down, just missing a man who lunged at him brandishing a crude spear. With a hoarse
gasp, the man fell across the path with an arrow buried in his back. Shai kept riding, the horses jumping over the body as they caught his tension. Ahead, Ladon had plunged into the trees and was hacking at a person on the ground, while Veras crashed through the forest in pursuit of unseen others.
Edard was swearing, clutching his right arm. 'I didn't see them! They jumped right out at us!'
'There's four or five more,' said Zubaidit, holding a bloody sword. A man had crawled off the trail and collapsed. 'Best we catch them. We can't chance being recognized later.'
'Let's go!' Eridit had a short sword, one of those common to Olossi's militia, and although she'd drawn it, she held it as if in gesture, a way to look dashing and brave, not as if she had the least idea how to kill. But wasn't that what she did as a professional entertainer? She chanted and acted tales in front of an adoring audience, they'd told him. She grinned at Shai, and he thought it would be better to die than to feel this way when he needed to be concentrating on the trouble at hand.
'Where's Tohon?' asked Bai.
The scout appeared as she spoke, grabbing the reins from Shai. 'If they escape, they might recognize us later. Veras is on their trail, good lad.'
Edard spurred after the young militia man, Eridit right after him and Ladon pushing past as Bai hung back.
'I'll do a circuit,' said Tohon. 'Make sure we've missed none. You go ahead with Shai.'
Bai nodded, and Shai followed her. But the soldiers they were chasing were on foot, made swift by desperation, while they were impeded in the woodland by having horses. They pushed south, yet their quarry remained just out of range all day, and they had to switch out walking and riding lest they blow the horses. Only Tohon and Shai's Qin horses were tough enough to keep the pace.
As afternoon settled into twilight, the woodland cover became more scattered and the land sloped steadily upward until with night falling they reached high plateau country. The fleeing soldiers pushed on into a sea of grass. Where they crossed a shallow stream, Tohon and Bai handed out their horses to the others and jogged into the darkness.
'The hells!' muttered Edard. 'Do they think we can't manage? A cursed outlander, and her, not much older than my own eldest daughter? Do they think they're going to kill them all?'
Shai watered the horses, careful they did not take too much. Then he led them by turns in cooling circles, Ladon and Veras walking the others, while Eridit washed and bound Edard's wound by lamplight.
'Do we wait here for them to come back?' Eridit asked. 'Or go after them?'
'At night?' Edard clucked irritably. 'Ouch!'
'Sorry. It's not too deep. I don't think you'll die.'
'Didn't say I thought I would.'
'He's a prick,' muttered Ladon to Veras, and Veras grunted agreement. Shai could tell these two knew each other well, and he had to admit they'd handled the skirmish decently and, like Eridit, kept up today's hard pace without complaint.
Eridit was murmuring close beside Edard, asking him to tell her about himself and his famous clan, the river transporters who wore the badge of the silk slippers, like in the tale. He looked like he wasn't feeling any pain from his injury as long as she was petting him. Ladon and Veras walked with heads bent together, checking the horses now and again but mostly talking in low voices and occasionally peering into the darkness.
Shai offered them the leads. 'I'll take watch.'
That sent them over to Edard. 'Here, Edard, are we staying or not, because either we should get moving or we should set out sentries. We might be attacked at night, taken unawares, like you on the cursed track today sizing up Eridit and not paying attention to-'
'I said, shut up,' said Edard. 'Anyway, she was behind me.'
'I was,' said Eridit. 'You two were the ones sizing me up.'
A long slow slithering drag like a heavy weight through grass hissed in the darkness. They all shut up. Faintly, in the distance, rose screams and shouts and afterward silence.
Eridit shuttered the lamp. Since they had no cover and nowhere to hide being exposed there by the stream, they circled the horses and set up positions to sight in all directions, not that their night vision was any good. The land was flat. Grass sighed as the wind
blew. Shai's ears itched, and he slapped at clouds of tiny bugs rising like mist around their bodies. Everyone began waving hands in a vain attempt to drive them away.
'The hells!' swore La don, and Veras echoed him.
A light bobbed out in the grass. The horses neighed, pulling at their harness, and were answered. Out of the darkness rode a swarm of riders, veiled men covered head to toe, only their eyes and hands showing. Bai and Tohon staggered in at the point of spears as the riders spread out to encircle their group. The cloud of bugs sank into the earth as though banished.
'Did you lose the cursed men we were chasing?' demanded Edard. 'Now look what trouble we're in!'
Bai looked at him sidelong, unwilling to take her gaze off the riders. 'We didn't lose them. These folk killed them, all five. Why they didn't kill us, I don't know, for I fear we have trespassed where we are not wanted.'
'Where is that?' asked Tohon as he scanned the picket of riders, seeking any weak link and shaking his head when he found none.
'We've strayed into the Lend. A wide and mostly empty land, to be sure, but it looks to me as though we've violated a tribal boundary.'
'Eiya!' muttered Edard. 'They'll execute us for sure.'
But the lendings did not kill them, although they ignored all overtures of friendship or bargaining. If they spoke to each other, they did so out of earshot. They watered their horses at the stream, and the next morning a leather blanket laden with tart cheese, creamy yoghurt, boiled mutton, and a flavorless flat bread appeared beside their camp.
'Good food,' said Tohon, eating the last two boiled sheep's eyes.
'Folk don't like to murder folk they've shared food with,' said Bai.
Tohon scratched an ear. 'Good horses, too. Big, elegant, and strong. Captain would like a herd of those. I wonder what we can trade for them.'
'If they mean to kill us,' said Edard, 'I wish they would just cursed do it and not make us wait.'
After the first day, Shai and the militiamen exercised the horses as
well as they could, and afterward paced out training drills. Even Eridit joined in, although she hadn't enough strength to damage anyone. Bai fought dirty and would not share her meanest tricks no matter how hard Ladon and Veras tried to wheedle them out of her. The lendings appeared to ignore the drill, but it was hard to say with them having veiled faces. One morning Eridit began to pace out the measures of a chant, and the lendings abruptly and deliberately turned their backs. She stopped immediately, looking truly frightened for the first time.
Two days turned to four. Three times Tohon tried sneaking out and three times got himself prodded back, politely but firmly. Four days turned to eight. Bai led the others in the prayers that welcomed dawn and night, but they kept their voices low and their gestures modest. At these times, Tohon and Shai sat apart. Tohon was not a praying man, although Shai whispered supplications to the Merciful One.
On the morning of the eleventh day three new riders appeared, faces unveiled. Shai thought they looked like women, although their long robes were cut so cunningly to hide their bodies while making it easy for them to ride that it was hard to tell. Their dark skin looked human enough, but it was mottled with a strange green color, like something was growing on them. They reined in their horses out of arrowshot, dismounted, walked four paces forward, and waited with arms crossed.
Edard walked forward. 'Greetings of the dawn, honored ones. I am commander of this small party, which-' They turned their backs.
He retreated, looking flustered.
'What in the hells does that mean?' he muttered to Bai as the others gathered around. 'Do they mean to just let us sit here and grow old by this cursed stream with this cursed grass and sky driving us to cursed madness, eh?'
