courier! Get your ass back to the Colonel! Tell him we’re in contact and pursuing to the northwest. It looks to me like they’re breaking back the way they came!”
“On my way, Corp!” Private Zhosua responded as he wheeled his horse around and slapped his spurs home.
“The rest of you-after me!”
“Mite showy, My Lord,” Tobys Raimair said judiciously, watching the lurid stab of pistol fire on the far side of the valley.
“Perhaps a little, ” Coris allowed, holding one hand out palm down and waggling it from side to side. “Effective, though.”
“Wonder how many he winged this time?” Raimair said. “I mean, shooting from a horse-critter has to be spooked, what with guns going off in its ear for the first time-and in the dark, and all, with no lanterns. Has to be less accurate than he was back at the Palace, wouldn’t you say, My Lord?”
“I’m not prepared to wager against the seijin under any circumstances, Tobys,” Coris replied dryly.
“Will you two stop it?!” Irys demanded. “They’re probably chasing him over there right this minute!”
“Well, of course they are, Your Highness,” Raimair acknowledged, turning in the saddle to face her. “Whole point of the exercise.”
“But what if he was wrong about being able to sneak away from them?” Daivyn demanded, his voice tight with anxiety, and Raimair reached out and ruffled the boy’s hair with his hand.
“You ever hear the story about the hunting hound that caught the slash lizard, Your Highness?” he asked. The prince looked up at him without speaking for a second or two, then nodded slowly, and the sergeant shrugged. “Well, there’s your answer. I’m sure they’re doing their damnedest-pardon my language, Your Highness,” he apologized to Irys, “to catch up with him this very minute. And if they’re dead unlucky, they will.”
“We’ve got them now, Sir!”
“You think so?” Colonel Aiphraim Tahlyvyr looked up from the map to arch one eyebrow at his aide. The young man was holding the bull’s-eye lantern so the colonel could see the map, and he looked astounded by his superior’s question.
“Well… yes, Sir,” he said after a moment. “Don’t you?”
“I think we’ve got an excellent chance to catch up with them now,” Tahlyvyr replied. “On the other hand, we ought to have caught them well before now. Traitors or not, and heretics or not, this is an elusive fish, Brahndyn. I’m not going to count it as caught until I’ve netted it and got it in the boat.”
Lieutenant Maigowhyn nodded. His colonel’s passion for fishing was something he’d never understood, but the metaphor made sense, anyway.
“The thing I’m wondering,” Tahlyvyr said meditatively, tapping himself on the chin while he thought, “is whether all that gunfire was really a surprise reaction.”
“I beg your pardon, Sir?”
“Well, whether running into our patrol was a surprise or not, it was pretty spectacular, wasn’t it? Would you care to bet a silver that every single picket and patrol out there isn’t headed in the same direction right now? If you were leading one of those patrols, wouldn’t you have headed straight for the gunfire?”
“Of course, Sir!”
“Spoken like a good officer in training, Brahndyn. ‘Ride to the sound of the guns’-that’s what we teach you. And it’s usually the right thing to do, too. But suppose it wasn’t really all gunfire to begin with? Remember, these bastards blew up a sizable chunk of King Zhames’ palace, according to the wyvern messages. What if they brought along a supply of firecrackers? One man with three or four of those double-barreled ‘pistols’ the Charisians seem so fond of and a couple of dozen firecrackers to go off in the underbrush, and all of a sudden every man we’ve got scattered around the hills is haring off like slash lizards that smell blood. And meanwhile-?”
He arched both eyebrows at Maigowhyn this time, and the lieutenant frowned. Then his eyes widened.
“And meanwhile the rest of them sneak right past us to the river and meet up with their boats, Sir! You really think that’s what’s happening? ”
“Frankly, what I think is almost certainly happening is exactly what Corporal Zhud thinks is happening, and even if it isn’t, their boats turned back two days ago, so there’s no one to meet them anyway,” Tahlyvyr replied. “But I didn’t get to be a colonel by not hedging my bets.”
“So what do you want to do, Sir?”
“Given that anyone who can see lightning or hear thunder knows about that gunfire, and that all of our good, aggressive, competent junior officers and sergeants are going to be riding to the sound of the guns”-the colonel smiled at his aide-“there’s not a whole lot we can do. About the only people we have who aren’t already off wandering through the woods, hopefully overhauling the miscreants even as we speak, are Lieutenant Wyllyms and his detachment.”
“Yes, Sir,” Maigowhyn said with a slight but discernible lack of enthusiasm, and Tahlyvyr chuckled.
“Not the sharpest pencil in the box, I’ll grant, although I really shouldn’t say it,” he admitted. “That’s why I put him in command of our reserves and the extra horses. It let me keep him out of trouble. Now, unfortunately, it also means he’s the only one I can be sure isn’t off chasing gunfire in the gloaming.”
“Yes, Sir.”
Tahlyvyr gazed back down at the map for several seconds, then sighed.
“It’s a pity he doesn’t have more men, but we are talking about a fairly unlikely eventuality. Take him a message, Brahndyn. He’s to leave half his men to look after the remounts. I want him to take the rest downstream as far as this waterfall.” He tapped the map. “I think it’s the first real fall in the stream, so wherever they were supposed to make rendezvous with those boats that aren’t coming after all, it has to be on the far side of that, which means they have to get past it one way or the other. Tell him I want his men posted at the foot of the fall. And, Brahndyn-try to make him feel that I’m trusting him with this because of his competence, not because he’s the only person I can send, all right?”
“Yes, Sir.” Maigowhyn tried hard not to smile, and the colonel shook his head at him.
“You’re a wicked young man, Brahndyn. I foresee a great future for you.”
“Thank you, Sir.”
“You’re welcome.” Tahlyvyr started to wave the lieutenant on his way, then paused. “Oh, and while you’re at it, remind him that the King and Mother Church would really like to have the Prince and Princess back alive. Tell him I don’t want any shooting unless he’s positive he knows what he shooting at.”
Full night had fallen long since, and the moon was sliding steadily up the eastern sky as Tobys Raimair picked his cautious way down the steep hillside to the brink of the river. The rumbling, rushing, pulsing sound as it poured smoothly over the lip of the waterfall to the basin forty feet below was loud in the darkness. In fact, it was a lot louder than Raimair liked. He would have preferred to be able to hear something besides moving water.
Oh, don’t be an old woman, Tobys! he told himself. It’s worked exactly the way the seijin said it would so far, so don’t go borrowing trouble at this point!
He snorted quietly, then turned in the saddle to wave to the others before he started his horse down the rough footpath beside the river. If Seijin Merlin’s description was as accurate as everything else he’d told them, their ride should be waiting for them at the end of the steep switchbacks.
“By God!” Lieutenant Praiskhat Wyllyms blurted. “By God, the Colonel was right, Father!”
“Yes, it would appear he was, my son,” Father Dahnyvyn Schahl agreed. “We shouldn’t take God’s name in
