“You knew him?” he asked. “The Prince in Sunset?”
He knew Kard had ridden in the Sunset Brigades and fought in the Prince in Sunset’s revolt against the Unity, but this sounded like closer experience than that.
Kard sighed.
“Yeah, I knew the Governor—the Prince, whatever you want to call him,” he conceded. “Remember how I told you there were three ways to get a man to do horrific things?”
“Yeah,” Teer confirmed.
“The Prince in Sunset convinced himself his cause was just,” Kard said flatly. “And believed it so hard, it infected everyone around him. Still not sure he was wrong. All I really know is that he lost.”
The El-Spehari shook his head.
“Go rest, Teer,” he ordered. “I’ll take first watch, wake you in four candlemarks.”
With one final glance at both his boss and their prisoners, Teer obeyed.
18
The horses were cooperative enough. Linking them together with lengths of rope to form a continuous chain went without any real issues, the animals perfectly willing to follow each other in a long line.
The prisoners were not.
“You ain’t getting me on that horse, kid,” the first bandit snarled at Teer. “What are you gonna do, shoot me? Cut me free and yer gonna have all kinds of fun.”
Teer had undone enough of the ropes that the man was able to stand, but he needed to cut the prisoner’s ankles free so the bandit could mount the horse. Six other prisoners were watching, and Teer knew perfectly well that showing weakness was going to make all of this take a lot longer than they could afford.
“One chance,” he told the man, holding up a finger. “Ride the horse or be cargo; pick one.”
“You don’t have the ba—”
Teer punched the man in the head. He didn’t pull the blow nearly as much as he should have, and the bandit fell backward against the horse—his ankles still tied together.
The man might have been conscious. He might not have been. Teer didn’t much care. He grabbed the man’s mostly limp body and heaved him up onto the saddle, belly down, and then quickly tied his hands and ankles to each other.
A few stiff yanks tightened the loop, pinning the semiconscious prisoner to the saddle and holding him in place.
“So, one cargo,” he said aloud, looking at the rest of the bounties. “Y’all get the same choice, friends. Ride or cargo. Who else wants to be a saddlebag today?”
The next man up was the one they’d captured from the watch point. He rose with Teer’s help and shuffled toward the indicated horse. Teer watched him carefully as he cut the man’s ankles free, but he mounted without complaint and allowed Teer to tie his feet to the stirrups.
“Good call,” Kard said loudly. Teer looked up to see the El-Spehari joining them. “My partner is more generous than I am,” he continued. “I would have shot that fucker.”
Kard indicated the man slung over the saddle of the lead horse.
“So, you play by his rules and everyone lives, or you try to play by yours—and die by mine. We clear?”
Teer was familiar with the idea of playing good guy / bad guy in negotiations. Apparently, punching a man unconscious and tying him to a horse made him the good guy when handling prisoners.
In the end, no one got shot and none of the other prisoners ended up tied over their horses’ saddles. Teer wasn’t looking forward to dealing with the prisoners’ calls of nature over the course of the day or getting them off the horses at the end, but everyone got moving on schedule.
Several of the horses were pressed into duty as pack animals, carrying as much of the homesteaders’ gear and the bandits’ supplies as possible. The bandits had left the remaining wagon unusable, which Teer found mildly offensive, but what could he do?
He couldn’t rebuild a wagon from raw trees even if he had the tools and the time. He had neither. He just found the wanton, pointless destruction of using the wagon for firewood unquestionably wrong.
“You ride ahead,” Kard ordered. “Lead the horse line. I’ll follow behind, in case someone decides to get clever. The path to the road should be easy enough to follow; they weren’t the first people to camp here.”
“And then north on the road?” Teer asked.
“Exactly. Should find Doka pretty quickly—or she’ll find us. She promised she’d meet us, so she will.”
Teer nodded and put his heels to Star, riding up to the front of the line and grabbing the reins of the lead horse. In some ways, it was convenient that the lead horse’s occupant was tied down. It avoided him getting clever ideas.
He clucked at the horses, and they started up with him and Star. He didn’t know how far they had to go to get to the road, but as Kard had told him, the path was clear enough. There were far more ruts there than just those from the coach and wagon the bandits had brought into the hollow, and they all led in much the same direction.
If any of the bandits had clever comments to make, they kept them under their breath as the line of horses and riders made their way along the rough trail back to the road. It was a short trip before they came out onto a properly cleared stretch.
The roads there weren’t as solid as he remembered them being out west, but someone had at least made an occasional effort to follow the main ones and clear the trees. If there’d been any question in Teer’s mind that they were in the right place, Doka and the stagecoach were waiting for them.
Doka herself was sitting cross-legged on the driver’s seat, watching for them, and waved at his approach.
“Tie line to coach,” she instructed. “You and Kard ride flank and rear while coach lead.”
“Makes sense to me,” Teer agreed. He dismounted carefully and led the lead horse over to the stagecoach. He gave the women inside a small
