“Go!” I shouted when she hesitated. After a moment longer, she nodded and dashed into the woods.
“Stop where you are and I might let you live,” the driver called out to me. I turned slowly, facing him down. He was short and stubby, like Boris, but unlike Boris he was wearing a thick leather hauberk that looked quite well-made. He was well-fed and well-hydrated, and I was neither. His stabbing sword and his long arms gave him serious reach.
I had my foster-father’s stiletto dagger, and Boris’s belt knife. I was wearing the clothes I had been captured in—rough homespun tunic and trousers with a leather belt, and my heavy farm boots. Away to my left, the other slavers had got out of their wagon, but they did not move in to attack. Instead they advanced slowly, fanning out to block my escape route.
“Come on, don’t be an idiot,” growled the driver. “I don’t want to kill you, but I might be willing to teach you a lesson. A few less fingernails and mashed testicles wouldn’t alter your value at the mines. Come quietly, and I’ll let you off with it this time.” He advanced on me, sword pointing at my chest. In a moment, they would have me surrounded, then I would be recaptured.
Only one thing for it. I sincerely hoped this would work. If it didn’t, well, at least the woman had got away.
“All right,” I said loudly, “you’ve got me. I’ll come quietly.” I raised my hands and made a show of dropping Boris’s belt knife to the ground.
“That’s the way,” the wagon driver cooed. “Nice and easy. No one needs to get hurt.”
As I stepped toward him, I focused on the Mana which lay at the back of my mind. It felt fully replenished, and when I brought my attention to it, I felt it bubble up in response. He took a step toward me, kicking Boris’s knife out of my reach. His sword was in his right hand, and he carried a coil of rope in his left.
I channeled as much Mana as I could into my left hand and felt the familiar sensation of heat well up there. To my surprise and delight, flame suddenly erupted from my palm, wreathing my hand and my fingers. I could feel it, but there was no pain.
One swift step took me inside the trollman’s guard. I slammed my flaming palm into the side of his face. There was a loud sizzling noise and a smell of burning meat. The slaver howled in pain, springing back from me and dropping his sword as he brought both hands up to cover his face. To my amazement and satisfaction, the skin on the side of his face was blackened and blistering. He clawed at his head and charged blindly away from me, crashing into his buddies and getting tangled up in their legs.
This was probably my only chance. The other slavers were, for the moment, too busy trying to work out what had happened to their friend to follow me.
With a swift lunge, I swept up Boris’s belt knife from the dirt where I’d dropped it. Then I turned and ran.
I wasn’t sure where the woman had gotten to, but I hoped she’d covered some good ground. As I crashed through the undergrowth and began heading uphill, I was surprised to see her step out from behind a tree.
I slowed my pace as I approached her. “What are you doing here? You should have kept running.”
“I couldn’t leave you behind. I was watching you. What did you do to that slaver?”
“There’s no time for that now. We need to get moving now. It won’t take them long to care for the one I burned and get after us. Come on.”
We kept running. As the cover of the trees grew deeper, the undergrowth became thinner and easier to move through. The trees were tall, of a kind which I did not recognize, with pale, flat leaves and deeply ridged bark. Wide spaces opened out between them, peppered with groves of thick, thorny bushes and rugged outcrops of boulders. The ground we ran over was thickly carpeted with the mulch of countless seasons of dropped leaves.
Fortunately, our legs became steadier as we went. After days of being tied up, the returning blood pulsed painfully through my ankles, but it was a welcome pain. I glanced at the woman and saw that her face was set in an expression of grim determination. Clearly, she was experiencing the same sensation as me.
The land climbed steadily uphill. From behind us, we could hear the angry shouts of the trollmen and the crashing noises as they made their way through the brush after us. They were making good progress by the sound of it. It was unsurprising that they would have more energy than a pair of slaves who had barely been fed for days.
“This won’t do,” I panted. “They’ll catch us. We need to find somewhere to hide.”
She nodded, and we both slowed down as we looked for a likely spot. There were several clumps of the tall thorny, yellow-flowered bushes that seemed to thrive in this forest. Any one of them might have made a decent hiding place. Not far from where we stood, an outcrop of gray stone made a cliff wall fronted by a particularly thick clump.
I pointed. “There, if we can get in under those, we’ll be as well-hidden as we can be.
She nodded, and I led the way as we dropped onto all fours and shuffled in under the bushes, past the thick, almost tree-like trunks of their bases and into the shady space beyond.
We were just in time. The outside of the clump of thorn bushes was dense, and the huge spikes poked at us and tore at our clothes
