“Kard!” Doka shouted as the bounty hunter emerged from the forest. “You got plan for feeding this horde?”
“I don’t want to dig into the homesteaders’ goods too much, but it’s what we’ve got,” Kard replied as he caught up, keeping one eye on the trail of mounted prisoners. “What are you thinking?”
“Doka go hunt,” she suggested.
Kard shook his head.
“Who drives the coach if you hunt?” he asked delicately, gesturing at their collection of prisoners and escortees. “Having the bounties tied to the back of the coach is bad enough. I don’t think those women want to put their lives and safety in the hands of any man right now.”
“Teer can’t watch bounty line on his own,” Doka said. “So…Teer hunt? He bull, not sneaky.”
“I can hunt,” Teer said, ignoring Doka’s commentary. He glanced along their caravan. Seven prisoners, three rescuees and the three of them. Thirteen. “A good-sized deer should provide enough meat for two nights for us all.”
“You get deer?” Doka asked, but she nodded. To Teer’s surprise, she held out a hand to him with three rounds for the hunter between her fingers. “Impress Doka,” she told him. “Bring back a bullet.”
Teer heard Kard laugh as he shook his head at the guide.
“You expect me to take three bullets to get one deer?” he asked.
“No,” Doka said with a laugh. “Doka expect you to run out of Doka’s bullets and use yours.”
He took the bullets and grinned at her.
“And what happens if I bring your bullets back?” he asked.
“Then Doka impressed,” she chirped. “And Doka butcher deer for you. Fair?”
“Sounds fair,” he agreed, accepting her bet with a grin.
Teer might not know this particular environment as well as he’d like, but he certainly knew how to hunt deer!
Teer caught back up to them in the early evening as Kard was finishing up with the task of dismounting the prisoners. Finding any deer in the forest had proven harder than he’d anticipated, but the actual hunt had gone exactly as planned.
Doka looked up as he rode into the half-assembled camp and studied him and the deer slung over Star’s back. She raised a finger and a questioning eyebrow.
He rode up to her, swung down from his horse and handed her two bullets.
“Your change, Miss Doka,” he told her.
She looked down at the bullets in her palm, past him at the deer, and then grinned.
“Doka impressed,” she agreed. “Help Doka get deer down to butcher?”
Teer nodded, starting to untie the ropes while he looked around for a good spot. Most of the places Doka picked were recurring campgrounds, so he wasn’t entirely surprised to see that there was a flat stone of roughly the right size.
Doka washed the stone with some liquid that sizzled slightly when it hit the dry blood on the rock, and then waved for Teer to put the deer down while she removed a set of large knives from Grump’s saddlebags.
“Get fire started and help Kard,” she told him. “Doka said Doka’d butcher, so this Doka’s job.”
He bowed slightly to her and moved over to the fire. He figured Doka’s butcher work would be at least as good as his, and his field work would get enough food for their needs out of the animal he’d brought down.
Kard had the prisoners still tied together as he settled them down.
“They got their one call of nature,” he told the young Merik. “We’ll feed them, and after that, they can sleep or brood as they wish. The smart ones,” he said loudly enough that the prisoners could hear him, “will be thinking hard on what they can offer the Unity in exchange for their lives.
“The Unity has uses for useless men, I suppose, but they also have use for men they can hang over a wardstone!”
Teer hoped he’d concealed his shiver at that phrase. They didn’t need the prisoners to realize that he’d almost shared that fate.
“How does the whole process work?” he asked.
“We ride up to the Wardkeeper’s office, I present the Writ,” Kard replied. “Wardkeeper checks them against the pictures we have and uses a truth stone on the rest to confirm they were Boulder’s men. Then we get paid and they’re the Wardkeeper’s problem.”
“You get paid,” Teer corrected.
“We get paid.” Kard grinned. “The split is going to be well in my favor, but you’re my partner in this. Winter knows you saved my life, Teer. I can’t undo how we’re bound, but that means something.”
“I get the feeling we’re going to be trading that life debt back and forth for a while,” Teer said softly as he stared off into the night. “Not a safe life, this.”
“No. But you did okay, for a first time out. I’m content to have you at my back with a gun, Teer, and that’s not a thing I say of many.”
Teer nodded slowly, the image of Boulder falling to the ground after being shot vivid in his head.
“Strange thing to discover one has a gift for,” he murmured.
“I guess,” Kard said. “I wouldn’t know. I was raised to do something like this. No surprises for me.”
Teer knew Kard couldn’t say more than that with strangers around. He didn’t get the impression that any El-Spehari had grown up with a particularly happy childhood.
“I’ll go get the fire started,” Teer told his boss. “Doka should have the first cuts for us to start with soon enough.”
19
Kard took first watch once again, leaving Teer to grab his bedroll and settle down on the edge of camp. He had an ear tuned to trouble as he lay down, just in case.
Sleep didn’t come easily. Images of Boulder’s body kept popping into his mind’s eye, blank eyes staring up at him. He slept in fits and starts—and then heard movement.
He froze, listening carefully. It was dark now, the dim light of the
