That was the future’s problem, though. For now, they expected trouble in the morning and he needed to actually sleep.
Even if memories of a dead man danced in his dreams.
20
“Well, folks, we have the same choice as yesterday,” Teer told the prisoners cheerfully. “You can play nice and get to ride on horses like people, or you can be dumb and be carried like cargo. Anyone want the cargo option?”
He glared down the line, but all seven of the bandits were looking at the ground. Doka had brought the horses over and tied them together. All that was left was getting the bounties mounted up.
Teer tensed as he approached the first of the bandits with the knife to cut their ankles free. It would have been easier to leave the prisoners tied to the horses overnight, but that was unfair to the horses and bad for them as well. The animals hadn’t done anything to deserve that.
He cut the prisoner’s ankles free and stepped back, his free hand on his quickshooter in case the bandit tried anything. This time, at least, the prisoner cooperated. The man’s face was a bruised mess, visible even on a Merik’s dark skin, from being tied down to the horse the previous day.
Doka stepped in at this point, lifting the man into the saddle with an easy strength that was belied by her size. Teer wasn’t sure how much of the blue woman’s strength was a general Kotan thing and how much was due to the magic Doka apparently commanded.
He wasn’t going to ask, especially not in front of the prisoners. The ease with which their tiny guide moved the prisoners helped keep them in line, and Teer released the next prisoner’s ankles while Doka tied the first one into place.
Again, the man waited patiently. Even if Kard hadn’t warned Teer to expect trouble, the bandits’ quiet cooperativeness this morning would have left the young man concerned. Last time, they’d fallen into line after he’d knocked one of them down. This time, they just obeyed.
None of them looked like their wills were broken, which Teer took to mean they had a plan.
Whatever the plan was, though, it didn’t involve causing trouble early on. Teer and Doka managed to get all seven prisoners mounted up and tied onto the horses in a quarter-candlemark or so, and then the entire cavalcade set off again.
If they hadn’t been leading a line of tied horses, the coach might have slowed them down. As it was, the stagecoach was capable of going faster than the prisoners could safely manage. They were still clearing thirty-plus miles a day, which meant they’d make it to Carlon in the three days Kard had predicted.
Teer rode beside the coach, keeping a careful eye on the train behind them as he checked in with Doka.
“They behaved yesterday?” he asked.
“They scared of Doka and Kard,” Doka said cheerfully. “You too, but…”
“Not as much, ’cause I look young,” Teer guessed. “We’ll deal.”
“We will,” she confirmed. Her thunderbuss and bow were sitting on the seat next to her, and she was wearing the combined quiver and bandolier that held her ammunition for both. She nodded back toward the coach. “The ladies doing better. Safety best cure.”
Teer’s gaze back at their prisoners turned into a baleful glare again.
“It was as bad as I think, wasn’t it?” he asked Doka quietly, hoping that Rala and the older women couldn’t hear him.
“Worse,” Doka said flatly. “Men don’t get how bad.”
Teer ground his teeth and let his hand fall to his gun. He needed to know that. He needed to know what these men had done, because if they ran far enough and fast enough, he was going to have to shoot them.
It wasn’t his first choice—he’d been a ranch hand, which meant he had other options for stopping them—but he needed to be okay with it. Knowing just how awful their prisoners were helped with that.
“A stone and a half for bringing them all in alive,” he estimated aloud. “Didn’t say they had to be intact.”
“You not them,” Doka told him sharply. “Don’t let anger make you them. Do what needs, no more.”
He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, nodded.
“What needs,” he repeated. “No more. That sounds practiced, Doka.”
“Shaman’s creed,” she said. “Doka shitty shaman, gave up. But start.”
Teer chuckled softly.
“Not a bad creed,” he murmured. “I might need to remember that one.”
“Doka does for reasons,” she told him. “Is good creed.”
The trouble came almost exactly when Teer expected it to. Doka had taken the coach and the women off ahead to eat a quick lunch separate from the prisoners. Kard had walked a short line of three of the bandits into the trees to deal with nature.
The problem with expecting trouble at the most vulnerable moment was that it was still the most vulnerable moment. Teer was watching four prisoners, all still mounted up, and missed that one of them had cut his bindings until it was too late.
He wasn’t even distracted. He saw the prisoner toss the knife to one of the others and leap from his horse. If the horses hadn’t been tied together, the man probably would have tried to run for it on the horse.
As it was, he was running for the currently unoccupied lead horse of the line, likely hoping to cut it free and take off before Teer could get onto Star and catch up.
Unfortunately for him, Teer had been watching for just this. He was moving toward the prisoner even as the bandit hit the ground. They collided about three horses forward along the line, Teer hitting the prisoner with his shoulder and knocking the man into one of the horses.
The line of horses was staked down at the front and back, but that didn’t keep them from spooking at that. The ropes had enough slack that the entire line of horses bulged away, the sudden movement shaking loose
