We paused after ten minutes of fleeing. The eastern sky was just showing light, and I heard hoofbeats behind us. I felt confident we were headed toward the bog, but it lay two miles away across land as flat as any table. Our situation didn’t offer too many advantages, but if we found a circumstance in which panting and cursing were helpful, I would carry the day.
TWELVE
Pil and I paused a quarter mile from Leddie’s camp. I was limping and panting like a horse after a hard run, but Pil was pulling in deep, calm breaths.
“Damn you for being young,” I muttered.
She ignored that. “It will be sunup in a few minutes. I mean, there’ll be some light. Enough for us to show up like two big, blazing trees! In the middle of nothing!” Her slurred words came faster and faster. “We can’t hide, or outrun horses, or fight all chained together. I—”
“Exhilarating, isn’t it?” I chuckled for her benefit. I didn’t really think it was exhilarating. It was pretty damn terrifying, and even depressing. Sitting in a tavern next to a pretty girl while I won a pile of gold in a dice game would be exhilarating. This was just a horrible, maybe fatal, pain in the ass. But I didn’t want her to panic.
Pil didn’t panic. She tried to kick me, missed, and snarled. “Stop being ridiculous. And go to hell.”
“I’m not being ridiculous.” I plopped down on the grass and stuck up one leg. “Pull off my boot.”
Just after we fled the camp, Pil had taken a moment to reshoe me. Now she stood over me, an unmoving outline. I imagined her making a mean face.
“This is a poor time to stop trusting me, young woman. Step quick and pull off my boot! I can’t do it with these!” I held up my plastered fists and waggled them.
Pil hesitated another second before grabbing onto my right boot and hauling it off.
“Don’t lose it. I intend to walk away from here. Kneel down and put one of your hands on the ground.” She muttered something that sounded nasty but dropped down. I pressed my bare toes against her hand just below the manacle, and with them I pulled a green band of power from the empty air. “We should be grateful to Leddie for helping us feel this alive. I may buy her a damn present.”
“Ow!” Pil twitched but didn’t jerk away. “What are you doing?”
“Not breaking your thumb.” I did shift Pil’s thumb, though, and I pushed it inward where the big joint met her wrist.
She tensed and raised her other hand, but she didn’t say anything.
I smiled. “Good, hold still and don’t hit me. If you distract me, your thumb might bend backward for the rest of your life. Besides, finer women than you have beaten the hell out of me.”
“Are you all right?”
“Better than a chubby puppy. Be still.”
I bent, twisted, and mangled Pil’s thumb. “Slip that manacle off.”
Pil eased her hand free with no more than a slight twist.
I patted her shoulder. “Down with your hand again. Don’t dawdle, or Leddie’s horsemen will run us down.” I pushed my toes against her thumb joint, and she grunted. In a moment, I’d finished putting Pil’s thumb back in place, a simpler task than crippling it had been. “Other hand, Pil.”
“Hurry up, it’s almost light! We should run!” Pil was squirming in distress.
I didn’t answer. She was correct about the light.
Pil hissed as I shoved her other thumb into an unlikely angle. She eased the cuff down, and it hung, which must have hurt like a scorpion in the eye. Then it was off, and I repaired the damage.
I leaned back, resting with my elbows on the ground. “Ah, that’s good.” I assessed the still morning air. It hung dense with moisture, and no wind at all eased through it.
“Bib, we’re going to be trampled as flat as horse turds in about thirty seconds.”
I snagged a white band of power from nothing using my toes, tried for another, and then fumbled them both away. I pulled again, held one, and then pulled three more before I whipped them out in four directions. I eased the moist air a few degrees cooler and added a breath of wind.
“Look, Pil.” I pointed with my plaster lump at two riders outlined against the morning twilight, not a quarter of a mile away. Then woolly fog smothered everything for a mile around us.
Pil grabbed my arm and yanked at it. “I have your boot! Stand up, and I’ll pull it on!”
I rolled to my knees. “Wait.”
“Wait? Why? Why wait?” She slapped my boot against her leg.
I laid my plaster-encased right hand on the ground, raised my plastered left hand, and smashed them together. The crash sounded as loud as a ship’s anchor dropping onto the dock. Plaster chips flew, but nothing broke.
Pil grabbed my arm. “Stop, they’ll hear you!”
I shook her loose. “Oh, stop whimpering like my baby sister. They won’t find us in this fog.” I smacked my hands together again. The plaster on my right hand cracked a little, but the plaster on my left shattered and fell away. I flexed my left fingers. I still couldn’t feel the thumb and forefinger at all. “Well, I was hoping to set free the other hand, but that’s fine. Now the boot!” I stood and rubbed my hand against my shirt to knock off some clinging plaster.
Once I was reshod, Pil grabbed my arm again, but I pulled her back toward Leddie’s camp. “I
