Rhiannon turned to find him standing only a few feet away from her, a rope in one hand and a dangerous look in his eyes.
Before she could say anything, he continued, his voice soft but hard as rock. “It would be a shame for you to miss our hospitality.”
At her feet, Dionne rasped out a single word. “Go.”
“No.”
“Now.”
James reached out with his free hand and grabbed Rhiannon’s arm, and before he could clamp down hard he grunted and seemed to lose balance.
“Now,” Emma hissed.
Rhiannon swung up on Chocolate. She sent him toward the gate, praying it was open and that James had no way to signal it closed.
Every instinct screamed that she couldn’t—shouldn’t—be leaving Dionne behind.
The ride claimed her focus, the trail thin and unfamiliar, lined with buildings that could hold men or women with arrows. Chocolate reared up once as they rounded a corner and surprised a man with two goats. Rhi threw herself forward, tangling her fingers in Chocolate’s mane, and managed—just—to stay in the saddle. Chocolate came down hard on his forefeet, then leaped forward, almost unseating her again.
The next corner revealed a closed gate.
She started to pull back on the reins, but then a woman’s voice cried out, “This way,” and she turned to the right and found a thinner path. “Follow,” the voice said, and she did, praying to all the goddesses she knew to keep her and Dionne and Emma safe.
Rhiannon wanted to race back for her sister so badly she could taste it, but that way was surely madness.
“Now stop.”
She pulled Chocolate to a halt and peered around.
A woman dressed in no more than a nightshift stepped out between buildings. She had dark hair and eyes and darker bruises. Her cheeks and her thighs and one wrist had all been marked by rough treatment.
“Off,” the woman said, as if the one word was all she could manage.
Rhiannon swung her far leg over the back of the saddle and came to a trembling stand next to Chocolate. The woman’s voice was laced with fear. “Hurry.”
She led Rhiannon and Chocolate through a thin gate clearly meant more for human than horse. To his credit, Chocolate managed it without doing any worse than scraping his saddle. He pulled sideways on the far side and stared back at the narrow opening to register his disapproval.
Rhiannon turned to thank the woman who had helped her escape, but there was no sign of her except a small rattle in the gate, now closed behind them. She whispered a prayer for the woman’s safety as she climbed up on Chocolate’s back and leaned forward as he scrambled up the hill. She didn’t look behind her until they reached the crest where she stopped to let Chocolate blow.
She didn’t see anyone following. Gods. She had left Dionne. But it was more than they could handle, and they’d almost both been captured. “Stay safe,” she whispered at the fortified little town below her. “Stay alive, Dionne. I’ll be back.” She stared for a long time while Chocolate’s sides slowly stopped heaving. When he picked his head up and scented down-valley, she turned him and started off at a steady jog.
When they arrived where she’d first spotted the footprints, she hesitated for moment.
She didn’t know the path to Lookingfall. It would be mostly down, which was in some ways harder for a horse, especially in the dark. But behind her was higher, and ice would be bad footing, too.
She gave a deep sigh and turned down for Lookingfall. At least there would be a Herald there.
She and Chocolate were swaying down a steep section of the hill when the sun went down behind them and darkness leached most of the light from the sky. Eventually the moon threw a long shadow of horse and woman as tall as mountain down the path in front of her. From time to time she whispered softly to Chocolate, promising him grain and hay and a long sleep when they made it to town.
They went down and down, up again, and then down again.
She tried to feel Dionne, but there was nothing. Asleep. She must be asleep. Surely Rhi would know if Dionne were dead.
After another candlemark or so, Rhi pulled Chocolate to a stop in a small, flat place and dismounted. She felt so saddle-stiff and cold it was hard to move and equally tough to dig out a small ration of grain and water for Chocolate. She patted the horse’s velvety nose as he nipped around her fingers, looking for more. “No. You’ll get sick.”
He sidled away from her when she tried to mount, pulling her down so she twisted her ankle.
She hopped and fell and then forced herself back to standing, gritting her teeth, almost in tears.
She still held onto the lead line. She crooned to Cholcoate. “I know you’re tired, baby. Me too. But Dionne might be getting raped or killed or . . . ” she heaved and a tear ran down her cheek. “We have to.” She came close enough to stand in a burst of sharp pain on the hurt ankle and get the other foot into the stirrup. She grit her teeth, pulling up, throbbing in her swollen ankle as she swung into the saddle. “Come on, boy. Now you’ve got to do it. I can’t walk.”
The path turned and steepened. Moonlight no longer helped much. She murmured a prayer for safety over and over, worried that Chocolate would trip and they’d have to wait for light. Her ankle throbbed. Her teeth chattered.
She took her last sip of water. When they crossed a stream much later, she let Chocolate have a long pull of water, but she didn’t try dismounting again. She was worried she wouldn’t have enough strength to climb back on.
The sun had just started to strike a faint line of gray-blue behind her when she made out the chimney smoke and tall barn roofs of Lookingfall below them. She stopped to study it a moment as the light touched the top of the hills on the other side of the town. Lookingfall wasn’t terribly big, although it had a main street and what looked like an inn. There was a wall, but even with a wall and gates, it looked far less fortified than the town behind her did.
Friendly. That’s what it looked.
She shivered, suddenly afraid. Her legs closed so tight on Chocolate he lifted his head in spite of his exhaustion and twisted his ears back at her. Not here though, not her. It was Dionne she was feeling. She could never
make
it happen, but it happened when it needed to. The twin bond. The thing that had kept them together always. Dionne was scared.
Chocolate was too exhausted to pick up his pace, but they eventually made it to the gate, where a startled young woman gasped and opened it right way.
Rhi opened her mouth to warn her how horrible that was for security, and remind her that anyone could pretend to be a bard. But instead, she fell off Chocolate and landed on her butt, wincing as her ankle hit the ground.
The girl called a passing boy. “Steven! Take this horse and feed him.”
The boy complied, looking enchanted with the big horse.
“Only a little,” Rhi called. “Water him slowly, too.”
The boy turned and looked at her with disdain, as if she was telling him the sun had risen. Good. Chocolate would be okay.
She turned back to the girl who squatted beside her, staring in horror at her swollen ankle. “We don’t have a healer—”
Rhi interrupted her. “Herald. Need Herald.”
When the girl shook her head, Rhi felt herself deflate. “Town. Leader.”
The girl, wide eyed, pulled her water flask off her shoulder and handed it to Rhiannon. Then she raced away, leaving Rhi on the ground.
She drank a few heavenly mouthfuls of the cool water, letting it open her breath and dampen her mouth. Groaning, she rolled onto her stomach and pushed up onto her good foot, standing unsteadily.
Three men came hurrying up to her. “Sylvie said she had a dying bard here. That’s you?”
She shook her head. “Just a sprain. But I need help.” As she told her story the men began nodding. One spoke up. “My sister disappeared three years ago. Maybe that’s what happened.”
Another one asked her, “How many women did you see?”
“Only two. I saw one young one and one my age. The older one had been beaten, maybe raped. Both sounded scared.” She took another swallow of water. “But they were brave.”
The man who seemed to be the leader looked so aghast Rhi immediately liked him.
“We’ve got to go,” she said.
“No,” he said. “We’ve got to prepare and you’ve got to sleep.”
“Is Herald Paula here? Has she been here?”
“No.”
“I want to go back.”
The man held his hand out to her. “I’m Hunter. You’re in no shape to go, and we need to gather up our men and find you a horse. The one you rode in on is worn out.”
“We need to go today. I’m sure she’s not dead yet—I’d know. But she’s scared.”
“Three candlemarks.”
Only then did she let Hunter lead her to his house and lay her on a bed with an extra pillow to elevate her throbbing foot.
A vigorous shake of her shoulder woke her. “Mghmghhhhhh.” Her eyes snapped open as she felt another stab of fear, blurry and indistinct but very, very real. Dionne!
“Fifteen minutes, miss,” a small voice said. “I brought you food.”
She sat up, jarring her ankle so hard she almost screamed. “What time is it?”
Sylvie pushed a bowl of soup into her hands. “When we said. Paula wants to know if you can ride.”
Rhi immediately felt better. Paula had arrived. She finished off the bowl as fast as her tongue could handle the hot soup, feeling as if each bite was bringing her a tiny bit more awake. She had to lean on the girl to get out by the gate, where she found Paula, her newest Trainee (a young man named Gossy that Rhi had met once before), and at least fifteen other men on horses. They all wore leather armor and carried weapons of one kind or another. Rhi spotted longbows and swords and even two staffs sticking way up above their riders’ heads while the base settled into their boots.
A sturdy little palomino mare with four white legs stood bridled and saddled, her reins grasped lightly in Paula’s free hand. Paula was on her Companion, Loden. Both were big and bulky, and neither had their usual look of benign humor. “Can you lead us there?” Paula asked.
Rhi felt a grin stretch all the way across her face as she realized that not only were the Heralds going to help, but that the whole town had shown up. Almost every horse in Lookingfall must be part of the assemblage.
“It’s okay,” Paula said. “We’ll save her.”
They arrived at the top of the hill overlooking Paradise just a mark or so before sundown, the shadows already long on the hills. Rhi felt despair more than fear from Dionne, a soft dull ache in her breast.
There was only one way in that she could see. Straight ahead of them. They weren’t going to surprise anyone, anyway. Rhi asked Paula, “No need for quiet, right?”
The Herald shook her head. “No need.”
Even though she was tired and bruised and her ankle screamed bloody murder at her, Rhiannon drew in a deep breath and started singing. She chose a simple song of Valdemar, one they taught the new students at Bardic in their first year and which people requested in inns throughout the kingdom.
As she sang, Paula and Gossy and the men of Lookingfall passed her and the little bay mare. She joined up at the end, singing them down the mountain so loud her biggest hope was that Dionne would hear it.
When they came to the closed gates, five men walked the broad top of the wall, waving bows and arrows. James stood among them, in the center, directing and encouraging and glaring down at the arriving riders.
Rhi leaned in close to Paula and whispered in her ear. Paula nodded, and Rhi extracted Hunter carefully from the group threatening the gate. He gestured for one more man to follow him. As they faded back, Paula and the others raced toward the gate, engaging the attention of the defenders. Rhi led her small party through the trees by the stream until she found the gate she’d come through.
Sure enough, it had been left open.
As soon as the men left to take the gate ambushers from behind, Emma Sue Emily appeared at her side, moving as silently as a bit of fog. She pointed, and then went ahead. Rhi followed her to a small outbuilding on a main cabin.
Inside, they found ten women, one of them Dionne, all of them tied up.
At least he hadn’t poisoned them. Dionne had a bruise on her cheek and a cut above one eyebrow.
Rhiannon raced to her sister, holding her close, whispering in her ear. Emma freed the other women.
Within twenty minutes, Paula and her Trainee were letting themselves in the door, and a man and his long-lost sister were embracing.
A few months later, the twins were in the town of Ice Landing when they heard a Master Bard singing a song called “Rhiannon’s Ride.”
After it was over, they sat dumbstruck for a few moments, ignoring the bowls of bread pudding the cook had set before them.
Dionne leaned over to Rhiannon. “Is that the kind of song you’ve been pining for?”
She shook her head. “No. I want to write one that other people sing.”
“Still, a song about you isn’t so bad.”
“It should be about the women of Paradise. About Emma Sue Emily.”
“Without you, those women would still be there.”
Rhi’s face was nearly as red as her hair. “It’s still not the sort of song I meant.”
Dionne laughed. “I like it.”
The conversation ended there, because the next thing that happened was the Master Bard called Rhiannon up to sing. Dionne got ready to dance.
Otherwise Engaged
Stephanie Shaver
Lelia was gazing thoughtfully at her hands when she heard a plate shatter and a child’s voice shriek, “
I don’t like apples!
”
The whole of the Great Hall fell into stunned silence. Heads turned toward the dais where the royal brat dined beside her royal mother. Back straight and jaw tight, Queen Selenay gazed silently at her daughter. Elspeth glared back.