Chapter 11 #2
listen for the sounds of being followed every twenty paces or
so.
The stream flowed in the general direction
Roark told her ride, and she could have continued following it as
dusk turned to night, putting more distance between herself and the
riders who were sure to come after her at some point, yet the
farther she got from where she’d left Roark, the more she kept
being drawn back.
Roark, who’d stayed to fight and distract the
brigands, to give her more time to get away, knowing he couldn’t
hope to beat five armed men, but would do what damage he could and
then let himself be captured to save her.
Roger’s orders were to take them alive, so
the men shouldn’t try to kill Roark. But he would be fighting to
kill, not wound them, and men were known to go berserkers in a
fight, and fatal wounds were often taken even in practice
fights.
Alina reined in Etain to a halt and stared up
the mountain. If she didn’t keep riding for Silver Water Keep and
got caught by the men, then everything Roark had done for her would
be for nothing. But what if she kept riding and he died for her?
What if she could have saved him?
Alina turned Etain south and rode upstream.
She couldn’t leave Roark to those men. She wouldn’t. She’d simply
have to be careful and smart about it.
She rode under the light of a quarter moon
until she made the woods’ edge sometime before midnight. Pulling
out the spyglass, she searched the mountainside and sighted the
light of a small campfire at the top of the pass where she’d left
Roark to make his stand. She scanned the trail she’d taken down the
mountain and saw no movement. The men weren’t worried about being
seen, or they wouldn’t have a fire. They obviously didn’t think
she’d come back. She was one woman against five men, why would she
when she’d gotten away?
“Because they don’t know me,” she whispered
into the tuckered-out mare’s ear. Her mother had killed a man with
a blade to his chest defending her father, and her grandmother had
killed a man with a staff defending her grandfather. Her
great-grandmother had killed one of the men sent to kill her in a
knife fight, and bore a scar across her back to the end of her days
from that battle. “They don’t know the women I’m descended from.
But they will.” She patted Etain’s neck. “They will.”
Dismounting and staking Etain to graze, Alina
pulled off Etain’s saddle and went through her packs, taking stock.
Keeping the otter cloak out, she packed everything up, refilled her
waterskin, resaddled Etain so she could ride at a moment’s notice,
and lay down on her bedroll with the cloak over her, missing the
comfort and warmth of Roark’s body curled around hers. She prayed
to every god and goddess she knew to keep him safe as she lay
trying to figure out how to get him free.
She woke with a start to Etain’s worried
whinny in the pitch of night. She pulled her waist blade and stood
by the mare. “What do you hear?” she whispered. The mare’s ears
flicked forward. “What is it, eh, girl?”
The mare tugged at Alina’s hold on her
bridle. Alina held on tight to keep her from throwing her head and
letting out a loud whinny, giving them away to whoever or whatever
was out there.
“Shhh, Etain,” she murmured, stroking the
mare’s neck and glancing around, though she couldn’t see more than
ten paces in the dark. “Quiet, girl, let me listen.”
She tilted her head this way and that,
finally hearing what sounded like shuffling footsteps at the edge
of the trees. She let go of her horse and pulled out one of her
boot daggers, hiding behind a tree as the shuffling grew closer.
Etain tossed her head, snorting, as a great, hulking shadow emerged
from the tree line. A different horse whinnied loudly, and Alina
peered around the tree, her heart in her throat and her blades at
the ready.
A horse stood at the edge of their little
camp, its reins dangling as it bobbed its head up and down and
neighed softly at Etain. There was a saddle on its back, but no
rider. Alina waited and listened, but she didn’t see or hear
anything beyond the clearing. She stepped out from the tree and
went to Etain, laying a hand on the mare’s neck.
“It’s all right, Etain,” she crooned, taking
in the rangy roan. “I think the poor beasty is even more frightened
than you are, aren’t you, beasty?” she said, keeping up her soft
patter as she slowly approached the horse. “Are you all alone out
here in this scary place?” The horse tossed its head but didn’t
bolt as she stopped and held her hand out for it to sniff. “Did you
run away from those bad men?” The horse dropped its head and Alina
placed her palm on its nose and gently rubbed.
“Did Roark unseat your master? Did he send
you to find us?” She ran her hand down its neck and over its
withers. “You’re rather skinny for such a large,” she peeked under
its belly, “gelding. Would you like to stay here with us for the
night? Maybe join us on our journey?” The gelding nickered and
Alina chuckled softly. “All right then, Beasty,” she said, naming
him after her big coursing hound at home who he put her in mind of.
“Welcome to our scraggly band of would-be rescuers.”
She left the gelding saddled as she went
through the bags, finding only a cleanish tunic, a small sack of
dried field beans, a few strips of dried meat, and a flint. There
was a rope tied to the saddle and two skins, one half full of water
and the other half full of wine. She untied the wineskin and took a
long drink, then capped it and set it aside on the bedroll. She
needed to think.
“I have two horses now, both with saddles, so
I can switch off between them, which will keep them fresher than
the brigand’s mounts.” She stared down at the wineskin, and the
tale of her grandmother’s and grandfather’s adventures during the
hundred-league race came to her. She patted her tunic pocket with
the vial of White Milk. “I know what to do,” she told the horses.
“I just have to figure out how.”
By the moon it was closer to dawn than night.
Alina ate one of the meat strips from Beasty’s saddle and
positioned herself at the woods’ edge where she watched the
mountain’s ridge through the spyglass as dawn broke. Soon enough,
she spied horses coming down the northern slope she’d raced down
yesterday. Her heart stopped. There were five horses but only four
riders, and Artur was the riderless horse. Her heart beating in her
ears, she focused on the riders one by one as they got closer.
There, in the middle, she was certain she recognized Roark’s broad
shoulders, the way he sat his mount, the shape of his face, his
hair, his cropped beard.
She gave a feral grin. There had been five
brigands yesterday, and there were only three today, which likely
meant Roark had killed two of them.
She watched until they were less than a
league away, and then she tied off Beasty to Etain’s saddle,
mounted Etain, and rode deep into the woods enough to stay hidden
but close enough to watch the men through the spyglass.
***
Roark held on to the saddle horn, his hands
bound together at his wrists. The nag he was riding plodded along
behind Ned and between Cam and Shaw. The remaining members of the
ragtag band that had finally managed to knock him out cold
yesterday with the hilt of a short sword to the back of his head.
He licked his dry, cracked lips and tugged at the rope around his
neck, which Shaw, who seemed to have taken the loss of their two
companions the hardest, had control of.
They were following Etain’s and Alina’s trail
down the northern slope of the mountain, and Roark hid his grin
when they had to backtrack to find where Alina had turned Etain
into the woods. They managed to track the mare’s hoofprints to a
small stream, where Roark convinced Shaw to let him dismount and
drink while Ned and Cam rode up and down the water’s course trying
to pick up Alina’s trail.
After drinking his fill, Roark dunked his
head in the water, letting the cold wash away much of his haziness
and a little of the throbbing ache in his head. He stood and
stretched some of the kinks out of his body after a cramped,
uncomfortable night floating in and out of consciousness while tied
to a tree, worrying about Alina.
Ned rode back from searching upstream, and he
didn’t look happy.
“I didn’t find a thing,” he said. Which was
repeated by Cam when he rode back from searching downstream a bit
later.
Ned eyed Roark, who worked on keeping his
face a blank mask.
“The laird’s men said she’d be trying to find
a ship to sail out on,” Ned said. “Odds are she’s riding straight
for the North Sea Firth.”
“Which is due north,” Shaw said. “So why’d
she go west into the woods here?”
“To throw us off her trail,” Ned said. He
looked at Roark, who purposely widened his eyes. “Aye, that’s what
she’s done. That’s where she’s headed.” He jerked his head toward
Roark, who glared back at him. “Look at him, he knows I got the
right of it.” He cackled with anticipation. “Mount up, we’re riding
north.”
Roark let out the grin he’d been holding
back. “It won’t do you any good,” he said. “She’s halfway there by
now.”
“Seeing as how the firth is a three-day ride
from here, I doubt it,” Shaw said, giving Roark’s noose a sharp
yank. “Now mount up and shut up.”
“Can I at least pack my horse’s hoof with mud
before we ride again?” Roark asked. Though riderless, Artur’s limp
had worsened in the two leagues from last night’s camp to the
stream. “If I don’t pack it, his stone bruise will abscess.” He’d
heard them talking about selling the stallion as soon as they got
to a town last night. “He’ll be worth nothing to you if that
happens.”
“Make it quick,” Ned said.
Roark held his hands out for Shaw to untie
his wrists. “Don’t forget I still have a hold of this.” Shaw
grinned, showing several gaps in his teeth, and gave the rope
around Roark’s neck another quick yank.
Unwrapping Artur’s hoof, Roark frowned. The
bruise had grown and darkened. He led the horse into the cold
water, hoping it would soak some of the heat and swelling out, and
scooped up a handful of black mud he packed into the sole and