37. Horse Thieves
Chapter thirty-seven
Horse Thieves
The light pouring across the bed was buttery and too warm to be from dawn.
Rerdas shifted, tried to sit up, and fell back with a groan.
His muscles seized with bone-deep stiffness.
He didn’t dare move his shoulder, but did his best to push himself fully upright without waking the pain.
It was still there, but dim. At least he’d slept.
Beside him, Etiana's faint snores were muffled beneath a pillow.
He shuffled around until he could squint out of the little window. There were people coming and going along the street below, and in the distance he could make out the shapes of market stalls and tents that must have been pitched earlier. They had slept through a good portion of the morning.
He tapped his cousin’s shoulder. “Eti. Wake up.”
She grumbled something and tried to swat his hand away, but Rerdas shook her more urgently.
“Alright, alright.” She sounded as groggy as he felt. “I’m awake.”
“We need to make some decisions,” Rerdas said, still watching the window.
Outside, the chattering residents of Nishali greeted each other.
It wasn’t a small enough place that strange travelers would draw attention, but their injuries and blood-stained clothing surely would.
They would have to leave quietly. Or at least quickly.
“I think we need to steal a horse,” he announced.
“What?” All traces of sleep vanished from Etiana’s voice.
“We can move faster that way. If we go right now, we can be into the jungle well before sunset. We’re less than a day’s walk from the Southern feld territory.” He was already gathering the remaining medicine, slipping it back into the bag.
“A horse means we’ll have to keep to the roads,” Etiana said uncertainly.
“I think speed is the key. We’re not ready for a long march.
” He tilted his head toward his own shoulder and chose not to mention that the greater problem might be her ankle.
She’d have to stop and rest, and that might mean camping in the jungle overnight before they were safely in the southern reaches where the Red Guard would be more cautious to follow.
His stomach let out an echoing growl, as though reminding him he was forgetting something. They had only a heel of bread left. Food would have to wait until they were in the jungle. Rerdas held out the trellis crutch to his cousin, and she hauled herself up from the bed.
For a few heartbeats they gathered themselves and their few possessions in silence, until Etiana stopped in the middle of the room, shaking her head. “If we steal a horse, word will spread faster. It’ll only help the Red Guard find us.”
“We just have to be far enough ahead of them.”
“It’s risky.”
“Everything is.”
Etiana's mouth curved unhappily, but she followed him to the door.
The stairs deposited them on the main road, but they skirted the walls and ducked into the nearest alley. Even on the side streets, they attracted curious glances. Rerdas looped his good arm through Etiana’s and tucked his head down.
The buildings were more scattered the further they went from the center of town, and he glimpsed the forest’s green blur springing up in the distance.
More vineyards surrounded them, and ahead lay the whitewashed fence of a paddock.
Tall grass swished against his knees as they made their way toward it, but inside the fence, the same grass was cropped short. Horses had been grazing here.
“Get down,” he murmured, leading Etiana to a row of short hedges alongside the fence. They lay flat on their stomachs, watching through the scraggly undergrowth of the hedge. There were no animals in the paddock's circle, but it was attached to a slope-roofed stable.
“This is a terrible idea,” Etiana whispered.
“Stay here.” Rerdas swung himself over the fence.
He was glad to find that the pain that lanced through his arm and back was not unbearable.
Still, it was enough that he landed awkwardly in the grass and had to pause to catch a steadying breath.
The smell of hay and sweet oat mash drifted from the open entrance that led from the paddock into the stable.
It was larger than he had first judged it, big enough to house at least fifteen horses.
The stalls closest to him looked empty. He dropped into a crouch and listened to the noisy clang of a shovel coming from further ahead.
Someone was mucking out a stall near the front entrance. He had a razor’s edge of opportunity.
Rerdas scuttled further in, staying low in the shadows. He passed the nearest set of stalls, and a horse’s large, grey head popped over one of the half-doors. The animal looked right at him, ears twitching.
Whoever was working in the stall far up the row started whistling.
Rerdas was half-hidden behind a stack of straw bales, but there was no way he’d be able to hide the horse.
Moving as silently as he could, he snatched the bridle from where it hung on a post beside the stall.
The grey whinnied, and Rerdas sheltered behind the hay, but the whistler carried on working without pause.
He swallowed, eyeing the latch on the stall door. He was working up the nerve to slide it free when hoofbeats rang across the brick at the front entrance. Rerdas ducked, squatting behind the bales again.
“Fair afternoon!” someone called.
The whistling and the sound of the shovel stopped, and Rerdas peeked out to watch a stout woman emerge from the stall.
“Fair afternoon—” she began, but the man who had called to her interrupted.
“Are you missing any horses?” The speaker had not dismounted.
A chill blew through him. Rerdas’s heart tripped into his throat, and before he even realized it, he was backing away from the bales.
“Beg pardon?” the woman asked.
“Has anyone taken any horses from this stable?” the man snapped.
“A few were rented, but none without permission, sir. What are you—”
“I want you to check. Take a count. Now.”
“But—”
“Order of the Red Guard,” the mounted man added.
Rerdas spun and sprinted for the paddock. He clipped a rake, sending it clattering to the ground.
“What was that?” the guard boomed
The woman said something in response, but Rerdas could not hear her over his roaring pulse.
He burst into the sunlight, lunged over the fence, and tackled Etiana.
With one hand over his cousin's mouth, he pulled her into the grass and laid them both flat, ignoring the pain that ignited again in his shoulder.
A muffled thud of hooves crossed into the paddock. Through the hedge protecting them, he saw one gleaming boot in its stirrup.
He felt like he might shatter with fear. Etiana’s eyes were frozen wide and unblinking. Her rib cage was as still as his own.
“What exactly are you looking for, sir?” the woman's voice broke the quiet.
It was a long time before the man responded. “We are hunting traitors. I want you to move all the horses out of the stable to the hitch on the main road. I’ll be back for the count.”
“But—Sir, where are you going? How am I supposed to protect my stable?”
Rerdas heard the horse wheeling away.
“You don’t need to protect anything. Just do as I say, and the guards and I will take care of—” The rest of his words were lost to distance.
Rerdas lay with his heart ready to leap out of his chest.
“Eternals,” Etiana whimpered. “Is he talking about us?”
It had to be. They couldn’t assume otherwise. He rolled to his knees with a grimace. Fear shoved pain to the back of his awareness. He checked the stable door to make sure there was no one in sight. “We’ve got to get into the trees.”
He helped his cousin to her feet. Through the terror-fueled drumbeat echoing beneath his skin, his shoulder throbbed and the welts on his back ached.
He let out a sharp breath and swiped his hand across his back.
His fingers came away smeared with ointment that had leaked through the bandages and his tunic.
“Shit,” he whispered. He looked at the grass where he had lain. It was crushed and darkened with streaks of mingled blood and medicine. “Fuck.”
“If they have trackers …” Etiana's voice was strangled.
“Trees. Right now.”
They wasted no more breath. Etiana swung her crutch and took wild, plunging steps, while Rerdas trotted alongside her. He tried not to think about the divots in the ground left by the crutch, or the wake of trampled grass behind them.
He did not look back when they plunged into the murky green of the jungle.
They swiped branches aside and stumbled over uneven ground.
He told himself to take comfort in the thought that every step took them deeper into the sheltering green tangle, where it would be harder for the Red Guard to track them.
They would have to steer away from the roads now, and at least that meant the Guard would have to go on foot too.
Rerdas wrapped one arm around Etiana’s waist, helping balance her lopsided strides. They’d run with no food, no weapons, no water—No, it wasn’t worth thinking about. He concentrated on keeping their momentum. One foot after the other. They could make it.