was clearly in control of his mount, however awkward and rough his motions.
“You’re point-man, Sergeant,” Piotr told him. “I want us strung out to the limit of mutual visibility. No bunching up. Start up the trails for the flat rock—you know the place—and wait for us.”
Bothari jerked his horse’s head around and kicked at its sides, and clattered off up the woodland path at the seat-thumping pace called a canter.
Supposedly-creaky Piotr swung up into his saddle in one fluid motion; Esterhazy handed Gregor up to him, and Piotr held the boy in front of him. Gregor had actually seemed to cheer up at the sight of the horses, Cordelia could not imagine why. Piotr appeared to do nothing at all, but his horse arranged itself neatly ready to start up the trail—telepathy, Cordelia decided wildly. They’ve mutated into telepaths here and never told me … or maybe it was the horse that was telepathic.
“Come on, woman, you’re next,” Piotr snapped impatiently.
Desperately, Cordelia stuck her foot through the whatchamacallit, foot-holder, stirrup, grabbed, and heaved. The saddle slid slowly around the horse’s belly, and Cordelia with it, till she was clinging underneath among a forest of horse legs. She fell to the ground with a thump, and scrambled out of the way. The horse twisted its neck around and peered at her, in a dismay much milder than her own, then stuck its rubbery lips to the ground and began nibbling up weeds.
“Oh, God,” Piotr groaned in exasperation.
Esterhazy dismounted again, and hurried to her elbow to help her up. “Milady. Are you all right? Sorry, that was my fault, should have re-checked, uh—haven’t you ever ridden before?”
“Never,” Cordelia confessed. He hastily pulled off the saddle, straightened it back around, and fastened it more tightly. “Maybe I can walk. Or run.” Or slit my wrists. Aral, why did you send me off with these madmen?
“It’s not that hard, Milady,” Esterhazy promised her. “Your horse will follow the others. Rose is the gentlest mare in the stables. Doesn’t she have a sweet face?”
Malevolent brown eyes with purple centers ignored Cordelia. “I can’t.” Her breath caught in a sob, the first of this ungodly day.
Piotr glanced at the sky, and back over his shoulder. “Useless Betan frill,” he snarled at her. “Don’t tell me you’ve never ridden astride.” His teeth bared. “Just pretend it’s my son.”
“Here, give me your knee,” said Esterhazy after an anxious look at the Count, cupping his hands.
Take the whole damned leg. She was shaking with anger and fear. She glared at Piotr, and grabbed again at the saddle. Somehow, Esterhazy managed to boost her aboard. She clung like grim death, deciding after one glance not to look down.
Esterhazy tossed her reins to Piotr, who caught them with an easy wrist-flick and took her horse in tow. The trail became a kaleidoscope of trees, rocks, sucking mud puddles, whipping branches, all whirling and bumping past. Her belly began to ache, her new scar twinging. If that bleeding starts again inside … They went on, and on, and on.
They bumped down at last from a canter to a walk. She blinked, red-faced and wheezing and dizzy-sick. They had climbed, somehow, to a clearing overlooking the lake, having circled behind the broad shallow inlet that lay to the left of the Vorkosigan property. As her vision cleared, she could make out the little green patch in the general red-brown background that was the sloping lawn of the old stone house. Across the water lay the tiny village.
Bothari was there before them, waiting, hunkered down in the scrub out of sight, his blowing horse tied to a tree. He rose silently, and approached them, to stare worriedly at Cordelia. She half-fell, half-slid, off into his arms.
“You go too fast for her, m’lord. She’s still sick.”
Piotr snorted. “She’ll be a lot sicker if Vordarian’s squads overtake us.”
“I’ll manage,” gasped Cordelia, bent over. “In a minute. Just. Give me. A minute.” The breeze, chilling down as the autumn sun slanted toward evening, lapped her hot skin. The sky had greyed over to a solid shadowless milk-color. Gradually, she was able to straighten against the abdominal pain. Esterhazy arrived at the clearing, bringing up the rear at a less hectic pace.
Bothari nodded to the distant green patch. “There they are.”
Piotr squinted; Cordelia stared. A couple of flyers were landing on the lawn. Not Aral’s equipment. Men boiled out of them like black ants in their military fatigues, maybe one or two bright flecks of maroon and gold among them, and a few spots of officer’s dark green. Great. Our friends and our enemies are all wearing the same uniforms. What do we do, shoot them all and let God sort them out?
Piotr looked sour indeed. Were they smashing his home, down there, tearing the place apart looking for the refugees?
“Won’t they be able to tell, when they count the horses missing from the stable, where we’ve gone and how?” asked Cordelia.
“I let them all out, Milady,” said Esterhazy. “At least they’ll all have a chance, that way. I don’t know how many we’ll get back.”
“Most of them will hang around, I’m afraid,” said Piotr. “Hoping for their grain. I wish they had the sense to scatter. God knows what viciousness those vandals will come up with, if they’re cheated of all their other prey.”
A trio of flyers was landing around the perimeter of the little village. Armed men disembarked, and vanished among the houses.
“I hope Zai warned them all in time,” muttered Esterhazy.
“Why would they bother those poor people?” asked Cordelia. “What do they want there?”
“Us, Milady,” said Esterhazy grimly. At her confused look he went on, “Us armsmen. Our families. They’re on a hostage-hunt down there.”
Esterhazy had a wife and two children in the capital, Cordelia recalled. And what was happening to them right now? Had anyone passed them a warning? Esterhazy looked like he was wondering that, too.
“No doubt Vordarian will play the hostage game,” said Piotr. “He’s in for it now. He must win, or die.”
Sergeant Bothari’s narrow jaw worked, as he stared through the murky air. Had anyone remembered to warn Mistress Hysopi?
“They’ll be starting their air-search shortly,” said Piotr. “Time to get under cover. I’ll go first. Sergeant, lead her.” He turned his horse and vanished into the undergrowth, following a path so faint Cordelia could not have recognized it as one. It took Bothari and Esterhazy together to lift her back aboard her transport. Piotr chose a walk for the pace, not for her sake, Cordelia suspected, but for his sweat-darkened animals. After that first hideous gallop, a walk was like a reprieve. At first.
They rode among trees and scrub, along a ravine, over a ridge, the horses’ hooves scraping over stone. Her ears strained for the whine of flyers overhead. When one came, Bothari led her on a wild and head-spinning slide down into a ravine, where they dismounted and cowered under a rock ledge for minutes, until the whine faded. Getting back out of the ravine was even more difficult. They had to lead the horses up, Bothari practically seeming to hoist his along the precarious scrubby slope.
It grew darker, and colder, and windier. Two hours became three, four, five, and the smoky darkness turned pitchy. They bunched up with the horses nose to tail, trying not to lose Piotr. It began to rain, a sad black drizzle that made Cordelia’s saddle even slipperier.
Around midnight they came to a clearing, hardly less black than the shadows, and Piotr at last called a halt. Cordelia sat against a tree, stunned with exhaustion, nerve-strung, holding Gregor. Bothari split a ration bar he’d been carrying in his pocket, their only food, between Cordelia and Gregor. With Bothari’s uniform jacket wrapped around him, Gregor finally overcame the chill enough to sleep. Cordelia’s legs went pins and needles, beneath him, but at least he was a lump of warmth.
Where was Aral, by now? For that matter, where were they? Cordelia hoped Piotr knew. They could not have made more than five kilometers an hour at most, with all that up and down and switch-back doubling. Did Piotr really imagine they were going to elude their pursuers this way?
Piotr, who had sat for a while under his own tree a few meters off, got up and went into the scrub to piss, then came back to peer at Gregor in the dimness. “Is he asleep?”
“Yes. Amazingly.”
“Mm. Youth,” Piotr grunted. Envy?
