“From the back, riding away,” Jors reminded her.
“More than we had,” Erika said, yawning. “More than we had.”
Jors still had Circuit to ride, but these bandits had killed a dozen, probably more, and would have killed the young man he’d pulled from the barn. Gervais was strangely hard to convince that breaking away to help Erika track and capture one of the three was more than justified, but he finally gave in. Dawn found the four of them heading out of the compound.
Cut deep in the mud then frozen overnight, the tracks were easy to follow until, in the lee of a copse of trees, they suddenly disappeared under the hoofmarks of a herd of cattle. Probably the same rough-coated cattle spread out along beside the tracks, enjoying the weak spring sunshine. The closest few looked up when the Heralds approached, and ran a short ways before rocking to a stop and setting off another bunch, the ripple of movement running through the sizable herd.
“We’re never going to follow their tracks out of this,” Erika muttered as Jors dismounted to get a closer look at the ground. “They could have turned. They could have headed off in any direction. We’ll have to circle the entire herd. And hopefully the herd won’t spook and run exactly the way we don’t want them to.”
:Cows don’t listen.:
Gervais sounded insulted.
“Yeah, Raya says the same thing,” Erika laughed when Jors repeated his Companion’s observation. “Any luck?”
Crouched low, Jors pulled off his glove and ran his fingers through the impressions of cloven hooves, searching for the unbroken arc of a horse’s print. Unfortunately, cows could cut a dry trail to shreds; a wet trail, with added thrown mud, they obliterated. A detail the three fleeing bandits had obviously known.
He straightened, scanned the horizon, and took an involuntary step. Then another. “This way.”
“How ...” Erika stopped, head cocked, clearly listening to Raya. After a moment, she closed her eyes and sighed. When she opened them, she shifted her weight and Raya began to move forward along the line Jors had indicated. “All right, then. Let’s go.”
Not long after, they found the place the bandits had spent the night.
A fox stared up at them from one end of the slaughtered steer, two crows from the other, all three wary but unwilling to leave such a prize.
“They couldn’t have set the fire as a distraction,” Jors noted as the Companions began to pick up speed, the trail clear again. “Not this far out.”
“Destruction for the sake of destruction,” Erika snarled. “Mayhem for the sheer bloody pleasure they take in it. And the more they get away with, the more things will escalate.”
“Then we make sure they don’t get away with it.”
“So we’d better catch them before they get into those hills.” Erika tossed her head toward the layered ridges on the horizon, still covered in snow. “Those things are crossed with canyons and gullies and some very nasty ground. They get in there, we’ll never find them.”
“Do you smell . . . ?”
“Beef.” Jors scanned the sky for smoke but saw nothing rising against the low-lying gray clouds. “They’re close.” He pulled Gervais to a stop, pulled his bow free, and slid to the ground, dropping low as he reached the top of the rise. There, in a hollow, backs to a clump of leafless willow, the three bandits sat around a small, smokeless fire roasting hunks of meat on the points of their knives.
Jors figured they’d probably stopped here at the edge of the plain before they’d head into the canyon he could see as a black line in the first rise of hills.
“We move along that bank of snow ...” Erika’s low voice washed warmly against his ear. “ . . . and they’ll never see us until it’s too late.”
“We should ride . . . ”
“No, they’ll have loaded crossbows ready.”
Now she’d mentioned it, Jors saw the butt of one bow lying close to hand.
“They’ve shot as many horses as people. Maybe more. Raya and Gevais can distract them, make some noise over that way where they won’t be big white targets ...” She pointed past the opposite side of the hollow. “ . . . just before we move in.”
The girl threw back her head and laughed, punching the man next to her in the shoulder with the side of her fist when he reached out to pull her braid.
Brother
, Jors realized, and tried not to wonder about the wave of relief.
“Jors? Can you do this?”
He twisted to see Erika staring at him, her expression so neutral she had to be hiding something. “What? Why . . . ?” He twisted a little farther to see both Companions staring at him as well.
:Gervais?:
:The girl. . .:
:Is as guilty as the rest.:
She was. Erika had tracked them to the cattle holding. They’d tracked them together this far. The girl was one of the bandits and the bandits were thieves and murderers. If she hadn’t thrown the torch herself, she allowed it to be thrown, knowing that horses would die and not caring if people did.
:If you are sure.:
The girl threw back her head and laughed . . .
“Jors?”
“Of course I’m sure.”
Erika glanced over at the Companions and shrugged., a quick rise and fall of her shoulders that said,
Let’s get on with this
as clearly as if she’d spoken aloud. It was Erika’s call. She wasn’t senior but Jors had joined her hunt. Pulling her sword, she nodded toward the fire. “All right. Go.”
It worked exactly as planned.
Heads started to turn as Erika rose out of her crouch, then jerked back the other way as the two Companions managed to sound like a charging cavalry unit. Jors got two shots off, confident enough in his ability to shoot past the other Herald. The first arrow pinned one male bandit to the ground through the trailing end of his jacket, and the second went into the shoulder of the second male, causing the throwing knife he held to slide from spasming fingers. The third . . .
The third . . .
Her eyes were as dark up close. There was grease on her chin and a perfect line of white teeth showed between slightly parted lips. She had a mole on one cheek, the flat dark kind Jors had heard girls refer to as beauty marks. Fitting. She was beautiful. Not very tall. But strong. Her gloves on the ground by the fire, she wrapped one bare hand around the saddle horn and swung up onto the moving horse, feet not touching the stirrups until she’d been in the saddle for half a dozen strides. She bent low, tucked behind the cantle, further hidden behind a sudden scud of blowing snow. He didn’t have a shot.
The ring of steel on steel spun him around. Erika was fighting the bandit he’d pinned. The man—visibly older than the bandit girl—had shrugged free of his jacket, but the delay had given Erika time to seize the advantage and she clearly had no intention of giving it back. One blow, two, and he went down . . .
... as the bandit with the arrow in his shoulder rose up to his knees, his knife in his other hand, leaning in to slash at Erika’s hamstrings.
Jors charged forward and kicked the knife clear, then pivoted and kicked the bandit in the head.
The girl was gone, the pounding of her horses hooves growing fainter.
“She’ll be nearly to those canyons by now,” Erika growled.
“If you can handle these two, I’ll go after her.”
“Those canyons are a maze; you’ll never . . . ”
“I’m a better tracker than you are, you know I am. And she hasn’t got that much of a lead.”
Erika wanted to say no. He didn’t know why, but he could see it on her face. Thing was, she wanted to bring these people in more, and he could see that too. Finally, she nodded.
Gervais ran past and Jors swung up much the way the bandit girl had, bow in his free hand. As they cleared the hollow, he saw the girl reach the line of black and disappear.
By the time they reached the canyon it was snowing hard enough Jors appreciated the cover the cliffs provided. He’d left his heavy winter leathers behind in Devin. The lighter clothing he wore wasn’t made for extended cold weather, but, hopefully, he wouldn’t be out in it long enough for it to be a problem.
:She can’t have gone far.:
She hadn’t.
Nor was she trying particularly hard to hide her trail, Jors realized as they headed up a slope steep enough he felt himself sliding back in the saddle. She probably assumed her familiarity with the canyons would help her to get away. Only that familiarity would allow her to move so fast over such treacherous trails.
If Gervais had been a horse, it might have worked.
:There!:
:I see her!:
When she realized he was close, she put her heels to her horse so that bandit and Herald ended up galloping single file along a narrow ledge. To the left, sheer rock rose over Jors’ head. To the right was a drop of maybe twice his height, down to what looked like a dry riverbed. Dangerous but not deadly.
The next time he looked, the riverbed had fallen away down a tumbled hill of rock to flatten out a considerable distance below.
The girl was a brilliant rider, he’d give her that.
Jors could almost reach out and grab the blowing ends of a dark tail when the horse screamed, hooves striking wildly at the rock as it tipped to the right and fell.
She twisted around, met Jors’ eyes . . .
Jors clutched at the saddle as Gervais threw himself back, front feet flailing at the crumbling rock until finally he stood, sides heaving, nose out over a section of the ledge that no longer existed.
:Heartbrother? Are you all right?:
Gervais didn’t answer for a moment.
:That was too close.:
:Not arguing. If you back up about fifteen feet, there’s a place that’s wide enough I can dismount.:
He felt Gervais draw in a deep breath and let it out slowly. One foot at a time, raising it carefully and lowering it more carefully still, Gervais backed up until a cavity in the left wall gave Jors enough room to swing down to the ledge beside him and slide past.
When he got back to the break, the blowing snow and the angle of the rock kept him from seeing the riverbed until he dropped to his knees.
The horse was dead.
The rider . . .
He couldn’t see her on the riverbed. If she’d been thrown . . .
There!
She lay on her back about halfway down the cliff on a triangle of ledge about six feet long and no more than two feet wide at the narrow end. One of her arms dangled; the other was flung out as though she’d been grabbing at handholds as she fell.
:Is she dead?:
:I don’t know.:
With her head turned away from the cliff, Jors couldn’t see her face.
Then her outstretched arm moved. Pale fingers flexed.
Jors crawled a little farther forward.
:I can get to her. The rock’s crumbled all the way to the ledge.:
But when he went to move again, a hoof caught the edge of his breeches, holding him in place. He twisted to stare up at Gervais.
:What? I can’t leave her there to die!:
:Raya says Herald Erika cannot leave the bandit men without shelter. Particularly not the one who is injured. She must get them to the cattleholding before she can return. She is . . . :
He paused and his ears flicked forward.
:She is not happy.:
Jors had no idea if it was Raya or Erika who was unhappy, nor did it particularly matter. Heralds made hard choices. It was part of the job. The good new was, if Gervais could still reach Raya, they hadn’t gone far.
:Gervais, you need to catch up to Erika. Have her tie the bandit horses to your saddle so Raya can make a run for the cattleholding while you follow at the speed of the horses. Erika needs to grab a stretcher if they have one, boards if they don’t, so we can secure . . . :
He didn’t know the bandit girl’s name so he gestured down the cliff instead.
: . . .
her
in such a way we can lift her out without injuring her further. Have Erika send out a rider to meet you and take the horses,:
he continued hurriedly, feeling Gervais readying a protest,
:so that you can join her as she heads back here.:
Reluctantly, Gervais lifted his foot.
:I will go after you reach the ledge safely. If the girl is not badly injured, you and I will pull her out.:
Jors took another look over the edge.
:That’s not likely.:
:And yet, it is possible. Tie the rope to my saddle.:
:I can’t risk pulling you over with me if I fall.:
Gervais snorted.
:I know exactly how heavy you are, Chosen. I can hold you.:
They lowered Jors’ gear first, just in case. Then, gloves tucked into his belt, as little weight on the doubled rope as possible, Jors started picking his way carefully down the path of broken rock. Most of the loose stone had been swept clear when the bandit girl went over, but the route was treacherous enough still that more than once only the rope kept him from following her horse to the riverbed. The last few feet to the ledge became a barely controlled fall.
A little surprised he’d made it, uninjured but for a bleeding scrape on his cheek, Jors knelt beside the bandit girl.
Her heart was beating.
Legs and arms were unbroken.
Bubbles of blood stained her lips and teeth with every labored breath.
:Broken ribs. Probably a punctured lung. We can’t move her without a board.:
He jerked the rope and ducked the loops as it slithered around the saddle horn and fell.
:Go.:
:Be careful.:
:It’s okay.:
Jors forced a smile he wasn’t wearing onto his mental voice.
:I think I can take her.:
:That is not ... :
He felt Gervais sigh. :
I will be back as quickly as I can. Herald Erika says you must stay warm.:
Staying warm would be the trick. Between the blowing snow and the setting sun, Jors could barely see Gervais up on the ledge, a white blur moving backward along the narrow path more quickly than looked safe.