CHAPTER 11
THEY KEPT TRAVELING.
There are practical considerations that arise when four people live in close proximity for very long.
All the little questions need answers, like who did the dishes and who got the firewood and whether they could spend a morning beating clothes against a rock before they set out, because nobody owned anything clean to their names.
They dealt with it in their own ways. Brenner griped. Caliban brooded. Learned Edmund prayed.
Slate contemplated their approaching deaths with an increasingly unhealthy relief.
There was also another consideration.
There are only so many bushes in any given stretch of forest, and Slate’s bladder wasn’t helped by the pounding her nether regions took on horseback daily. She was starting to think that you could judge a man’s character by how he reacted if he tripped over you attending to a call of nature.
Brenner would grin like a shark and saunter off, whistling. Caliban would say, “Excuse me,” turn around, and walk off in the other direction. Learned Edmund would turn six shades of scarlet, gabble out something, trace a hurried sign of protection and fall over himself while retreating.
Likewise, there was the matter of changing. Sooner or later you had to put a different shirt on, and no one ever stayed out of the campsite for nearly long enough.
Brenner would watch and offer commentary.
Caliban would turn his back politely and stand with his hands clasped behind him, and would even act as a lookout in case Learned Edmund wandered by, since the priest would again turn scarlet, make another sign of protection, and fall over—and that was only amusing the first couple of times.
Slate wondered occasionally if this would be any easier if there was another woman in their motley band, or if it would just make for twice as many unfortunate encounters.
It would have been nice to have someone to lock eyes with and sigh occasionally.
Slate considered herself enlightened, but there were still times when she wanted to throw her hands in the air and scream, “Men!” and then stomp off and kick something.
She did not do this, mostly because it would have confirmed all of Learned Edmund’s fears. It was a near thing, though.
She was dead certain they got into belching contests when she was away from the campsite. She wasn’t sure if she was grateful they were sparing her, or irritated that she wasn’t invited.
Oh, well. Just a few more miles to Anuket City, and then it’ll all be moot anyway…
They were half a week out of Anuket City when the storm hit.
The first raindrops weren’t much, but they fell from a sky that boiled like lead between the leaves.
Caliban drew his horse up, and the rest of them followed suit.
“That doesn’t look good,” Brenner said.
They all studied the sky. Lightning flickered off in the distance.
“I’d say we should take shelter,” said Learned Edmund, “but we’re near the Vagrant Hills right here, and I hate to leave the road.” Caliban grunted.
“What’re the Vagrant Hills?” asked Slate.
The knight looked around. “Forests and low hills, more or less. We don’t want to wander into them.”
“Why not?”
“You know how magic makes you sneeze?”
“Sure.”
“We’d probably have to tie you to the saddle.”
“Lovely.”
They watched raindrops make craters in the dust. Thunder growled around them, and a cool wind slithered between the trees.
“Maybe we can find something close to the road,” said Slate, kicking her horse forward. “Keep an eye out.”
They got about a quarter mile down the road without spotting anything likely, and the sky opened up with a cataclysmic ripping sound.
Everyone was instantly wet to the skin. Slate’s hair plastered itself to the back of her neck.
“Damn.”
“We should have oilcloth cloaks in the bags somewhere,” Caliban said, shouting a little to be heard over the rain.
“We’re going to have to get off the road,” Brenner called. “We can’t just sit through this.”
The Learned Edmund opened his mouth to say something—possibly to protest leaving the road at all—and a crack of lightning hit the ground less than a hundred yards away. Thunder smashed around them, not just a sound but a physical weight that rang in Slate’s brain and bowels as well as her ears.
Her horse bolted.
Slate was so blinded by the jagged afterimages of the lightning that at first she thought she’d simply fallen off the horse and that the sickening lurch was an after-effect of the thunder.
But then a spray of pine needles smacked her in the face and she fell forward, and she realized that the horse was moving under her.
In a stumbling run.
Through the dripping forest.
Ohmygodohmygod
Its ears were flat against its head. The forest was a wall of black cut-outs, given brief, flickering depth by lightning.
Can horses even run in forests? Will it hit a tree? Is it about to fall down? Am I about to fall off?
She flung herself as flat along its back as she could, clinging to the reins and the saddle and the mane, her legs wrapped around the horse’s belly, which she realized, rather too late, it might be taking as a signal to keep running.
Too late now. If I let go, I’ll fall off. At high speed.
The world slewed at an angle. The horse put its hindquarters down and skidded down a slope full of wet bracken.
It occurred to Slate that, suicide mission aside, she was almost certainly going to die right now because no horse could run through dark wet woods without slipping or putting its foot in a hole or breaking a leg in some fashion.
And this caused her to make quite an unexpected discovery—namely that she didn’t want to die.
Ohmygod I want to live I want to live I don’t care I want to live!
And hard on the heels of that thought: Well, this is a helluva time to figure that out!
The horse stumbled and recovered. Slate’s stomach did not. Wet grasses slapped at her legs and face like whips.
I could jump off. That’s probably safer, right? Right?
Part of Slate’s brain agreed. The part that was holding onto the horse was not convinced.
The slope leveled out. The horse staggered, caught itself, and ran. Rain poured into her eyes again.
It’s an old river bed. Oh god, we might live after all.
If I can just get it to slow down—
She searched her clenched hands for the reins. There weren’t any. Mane, saddle, a chunk of saddle blanket. No reins.
She’d dropped the reins at some point, or the horse had managed to flip them over its head, or something. Regardless, they weren’t there. Shit.
If she let go, she could reach down and grab for them.
If she let go, she was going to fall off.
If she fell off, she was probably going to die.
Well, maybe just one hand… She pried her fingers loose.
The horse hit a patch of rock and skidded on two hooves. Slate shrieked and grabbed tight again.
I can’t stop it. It’s going to fall down and I’ll break my neck and die or break my legs and die of exposure or—
There was a yell behind her.
She looked over her shoulder, and there, as she should have known he would be, riding like a lunatic or a demon, was (former) Knight-Champion Caliban.
That idiot. That wonderful idiot.
I take back all the times I thought about letting Brenner kill you.
His horse pounded down the streambed behind hers.
Lightning sizzled, illuminating the whites of its eyes.
Caliban didn’t look much calmer himself.
He was hunched over his horse, and if his sodden grey cloak hadn’t been glued to his back and the horse’s haunches by the rain, she wouldn’t have known who it was.
Well, he’s still on the horse, so it’d be a good bet it wasn’t Brenner, and he’s giving chase, so it obviously wasn’t Learned Edmund. Okay, I could have figured it out even without the stupid cloak.
Her horse skidded again. Coherent thought dissolved briefly into a screaming welter of IdontwanttodieIdontwanttodieshitshitshit—!
Caliban was shouting something, but she couldn’t make out the words. He was slapping his horse’s rump with something—it looked like the flat of his sword—and it was running, ears back, and somehow, madly, he was gaining.
He shouted again.
“I can’t hear you!” she yelled back.
Thunder smashed anything he might have said in response. Her horse squealed, and she had to stop looking over her shoulder and clutch desperately at it. She was hunched so low that every stride cracked the back of the horse’s neck against the side of her head.
Could he really catch up to her?
Hey, it’s a math problem. I’m good at math! If a horse traveling at twenty-six miles an hour going west is intercepted by a horse traveling at twenty-nine miles an hour going northwest, will their paths cross before or after the first horse breaks its rider’s neck?
She giggled hysterically. Rain and the horse’s mane lashed her face raw, and she giggled anyway.
Oh god, I don’t want to die…
There was a shadow next to her. The paladin’s horse was pulling alongside hers, neck to haunches, then neck to knee. She could see his hand, practically next to her face, as he groped forward.
If you think you’re reaching over and pulling me off this horse in mid-run, you’re even farther out of your mind than I think you are…
He might have been out of his mind, but apparently not that far. The hand passed her, swung down, and there was a sizzle of wet leather as he grabbed the flapping reins.
If Slate had somehow managed to get the reins, she would undoubtedly have hauled back on them with all her strength, and the horse would have bucked or reared or gone over or all three at once.
But Caliban had a somewhat better notion of the stopping distance of a horse on a wet riverbed, and the two horses went pounding along together, side by side, until the desperate run dropped down to a gallop, and the gallop fell to a canter, and the canter became a kind of stiff-legged bouncing trot, and then the horses had stopped and he slid off and Slate fell off and he caught her.