The White Road (23 page)

Madlen had found them three sound geldings, with saddles and tack, too.

Seregil raised an eyebrow at the old woman. “You’re very generous.”

“No more than you’ve been to me, in the past. Pass them along to someone who needs them.” She smoothed her chapped hands over the front of her apron. “It’s good to know you two are still about. I’d begun to wonder.”

Micum hugged her. “We’re lucky bastards, don’t you know?”

“You’re courting trouble from the Four, bragging like that. Better bite your tongue.”

Micum laughed and caught his tongue between his front teeth for her to see. “There now. Safe again.”

It was only a joking exchange, but Seregil suddenly felt a superstitious chill run up his spine. “Come on. We’ve a long ride ahead of us.”

They set out with hot roasted yams warming their pockets that would serve as a midday meal later on, when they were cold. Alec was glad of the warmth, as the morning was bitter.

The sky was clear when they set off, but by noon the clouds began to gather, and by the time they reached an inn called the Drover’s Head that evening, most of the stars were blotted out.

“I don’t like the look of that,” Alec said, studying the sky. “It will be hard riding tomorrow.”

“We could just stay put,” Micum suggested. “Thero
doesn’t know what day to expect us, if he’s even there by now himself.”

“We’ll see,” said Seregil. “I’d rather keep moving.”

The Drover’s Head was a ramshackle establishment, with poor ale and worse food. The only good thing about that was that there were only a few other patrons, and none who stayed the night.

The dispirited innkeeper gave them a room at the back, off the kitchen, which turned out to be more of a shed, with a few lumpy pallets thrown about on the warped floorboards.

“Hold on,” Seregil warned as Alec went to toss his bedroll on one of them. He nudged the one closest to him with his boot, then slapped at his pant leg. As he’d feared, these poor excuses for beds they had paid a full sester for were jumping with fleas. And where there were fleas, there were probably lice, too.

“No,” he said, regarding the room in disgust.

“No,” Micum agreed.

“Definitely not,” Alec said with a grimace.

Gathering their things, they moved into the dirt-floored kitchen and spread their blankets in front of the broad hearth, where the banked coals were still giving off a nice warmth. Their innkeeper and his servants evidently slept elsewhere; the room was empty.

Taking advantage of that fact, Seregil took a turn around the kitchen and came up with some hard black bread and a jug of sour cider. They sat on their blankets and passed the food around, gnawing a bit of the bread off and taking a swig of the cider to soften it up.

“Another day to the Bell and Bridle, and another two to Watermead,” Micum calculated.

“Do you think Beka and Nyal will still be there?” asked Alec.

“I imagine so,” said Micum.

“How is it, having an Aurënfaie as your daughter’s husband?” asked Seregil.

“He’s a good man.” Micum stared into the fire. “They say they don’t mind the fact that he’ll see her grow old and die, but they’re both young yet.”

“He’ll have their ya’shel children, though,” said Alec.

“That’s true, but it’s not the same as having your wife. It’s not the way things are supposed to be. You two are damn lucky to have found each other when you did.”

In every sense of the word
, Seregil thought.

Snow and Blood

A
LEC WAS
the last one on watch and woke the others just before dawn. Seregil left the innkeeper a few coppers for the bread and moldy cheese they took for a saddle breakfast.

The weather had turned damp and bitter, and dark clouds sealed the sky around the horizon like pastry on a pie.

“What do you make of that?” asked Seregil.

Micum eyed the clouds. “Snow before the morning’s gone. Probably heavy.”

“Then we’d better make good time while we can, if we want to reach the inn before nightfall,” Seregil said. The cold affected him more than the others, and Alec knew he wouldn’t be happy spending the night around a fire in the open.

Micum’s assessment of the weather was, unfortunately, correct. The first flakes began to fall soon after they started out. By midday it was snowing so hard Seregil could barely make out the road ahead, much less what lay to either side. It was a wet, heavy snow that stuck to their clothes and the horses’ shaggy coats and manes. It was already deep enough to obscure the terrain, and they took turns leading on foot, tramping along trying to tell frozen road from frozen grass. It was open country, but no wind stirred the heavy curtains of snow that surrounded them.

“How long to the inn, Micum?” Seregil asked, shaking off the snow that had collected in the folds of his cloak and Sebrahn’s hair.

“At this rate? We’ll be lucky to make it by nightfall.”

By afternoon it was falling even more heavily, blotting out both sky and the surrounding landscape.

Alec, in the lead on foot, suddenly held up a hand to signal a stop. “Do you hear that?”

Micum reined in. “Hear what?”

“That strange sound.”

They sat listening. After a moment, Seregil thought he did hear something in the distance—a deep, dull sound with a pulsing rhythm.

“What is it?” asked Alec.

“Damned if I know.”

“I don’t hear anything,” said Micum.

“Well, whatever it is, it’s too far away to be our problem,” Seregil said, setting off again.

He couldn’t hear it now, and soon it was the least of their worries as the snow came down harder than ever and the whole world went white—so white and blank that it hurt the eyes. Sound took on an eerie, muffled quality, as if his ears were just a little numb or lightly packed with wool, everything deadened by the soft hiss of snow on snow. The hair on the back of his neck started to prickle, the way it did in a dark room when he was certain there was someone hiding just behind him.

The rhekaro stirred restlessly, looking around as if he felt it, too.

Seregil tightened his arm around Sebrahn’s waist and called out, “Wait!”

Alec turned and called back, “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know. Something doesn’t feel right. Sebrahn, keep still!” The rhekaro was pushing at Seregil’s arm now.

“That’s the way he acts where there’s someone who needs healing nearby.”

“We don’t have time to—” Micum began, then reined in with a grunt of surprise.

No one heard them coming, not even Seregil. The white-cloaked figures on white horses were suddenly just there in the road ahead of them, no more than twenty paces from where Alec stood. Their wolfskin hoods were up, and a mask
of some sort covered the upper parts of their faces. Seregil couldn’t see how many there were, just the hint of other shapes moving among the curtains of snow.

“Alec!”

“I see them!” There was no time to get to his bow, tied on behind his saddle. Mounting his horse, he drew his sword.

Sharp whistles came from all sides, which meant their would-be attackers were signaling to each other.

They were being surrounded.

Tightening his one-armed hold on Sebrahn, who was fighting to get away now, he gestured toward the men blocking their way, signaling
break for it!

They kicked their horses into a gallop and ran straight at them. As Seregil closed with one, he saw that the mask was shaped like the face of a red bird, with black painted eyes surrounding narrow horizontal slits. The man who swung his sword at Seregil’s head had a mask like a wolf.

With his arms full of rhekaro, he barely managed to duck the blade and keep his one-handed grip on the reins.

They must have caught their attackers by surprise, because they were able to get through. With Micum in the lead now, they kicked their horses into a hard gallop, hoping to lose them in the snow before any of the horses broke a leg in a hidden ditch or rabbit hole.

“Bandits?” Alec said, looking back over his shoulder. He was riding so close that Seregil could have reached out and touched him, but his voice was so muffled Seregil could barely make out what he said. That eerie quiet had settled over them again, making the hair on the back of his neck prickle again.

As they pelted along, trying to keep Micum in sight, Seregil caught motion from the corner of his eye, but when he turned to look there was nothing there.

It happened again to his right, just past Alec, and this time he saw one of the masked riders pacing them. This one wore a fox mask. His horse’s hooves didn’t make a sound, but Seregil heard his whistle, and the answering ones behind them. Micum reined his horse away from the ones they could see, and Seregil and Alec followed hard on his horse’s heels.

We’re going to break our damn necks
, Seregil thought. And Sebrahn was still struggling!

The whistles started up again, all around them, sounding so close Seregil wondered why he couldn’t see any of them.

Suddenly Alec lurched forward in the saddle, an arrow protruding from his left shoulder. Micum slowed and grabbed the fallen reins.

“Damn!” Seregil reined in beside them, intending to make a stand. Before he could dismount, however, Sebrahn opened his mouth and sang.

The burst of power that emanated from that thin little body nearly threw Seregil from the saddle. It was like being struck in the chest by lightning and being on fire, all at once. The high-pitched cry drove a spike of pain between his eyes, blinding him for a moment.

Clinging on with his thighs and one hand, he managed to stay in the saddle and follow the others as they dashed away, hoping to take advantage of whatever Sebrahn had just done. He was relieved to see Alec upright again and riding hard, even with the arrow wagging up and down in his shoulder.

They drove their horses until the beasts were exhausted and they had no choice but to stop. The snow had ceased somewhere along the way, and the wind had come up. Looking back, all Seregil saw was a triple line of hoof marks slowly being scoured away. He reined his gelding around, looking for their pursuers. He hadn’t seen or heard any sign of pursuit since Sebrahn had sung, and he didn’t see them now across the snowswept plain. The masked bastards were probably lying in the snow, dead, just like those slave takers who’d killed Alec in Plenimar. He hoped so, anyway, though he was curious about who they were. They’d been better organized than most bandits he’d encountered. As much as he’d have liked to inspect the bodies, they’d have to backtrack for miles. Without their own trail to follow, they’d end up casting around while it got dark.

Just then Alec slid awkwardly from the saddle and collapsed in a heap, gripping his wounded shoulder with his good hand.

Seregil dismounted and shoved Sebrahn into Micum’s arms. “How bad is it?” he asked, pulling off his gloves.

“Shit! Hurts like hell!” Alec hissed between gritted teeth. “Don’t think it went all the way through, though.”

“Can you move your arm?” asked Micum.

Alec lifted his left arm and swore again.

Seregil knelt beside him. “Steady, now. Let me take a look.”

The arrow had gone in at an angle. Seregil grasped the shaft and gave it the slightest tug. It moved a little and he felt it grate against bone, probably Alec’s shoulder blade.

“Brace yourself,” he said calmly. “I’ll do this as quickly as I can.” Grasping the shaft in both hands this time, he snapped it off close to the back of Alec’s coat.

Alec didn’t make a sound, just fumbled one-handed at the bone buttons on the front of his thick coat.

“Let me do it.”

When he had the coat open, Seregil reached down the back of Alec’s shirt until his fingers found the arrow shaft and the hot blood soaking the fleece lining and the wool of Alec’s tunic. Bracketing the broken shaft with two fingers, he lifted the coat free of it, then gently pulled Alec’s arm from the sleeve. Most of the blood had soaked into the thick fleece at the collar. If it had been summer, he’d have left a blood trail for their pursuers to follow—if they were still alive. That doubt was going to haunt him.

Micum handed him his belt knife and Seregil carefully cut the fabric away from the wound. The arrowhead was lodged in the muscle between Alec’s shoulder and neck. A few inches to the right and it would have hit his spine. It was a painful wound, but not a serious one.

It meant pulling or cutting it out, though, depending on the type of arrowhead and how barbed it was. “You’d better lie down. I can get a better purchase on it that way and get it over with.”

Alec stretched out on his belly in the snow and rested his face in the crook of his right arm. “Just do it!”

Micum held down Alec’s left arm and Seregil straddled Alec’s waist. The bloody stump of the arrow was long
enough to get a good grip on, but slippery. He grasped it and pulled as Alec stifled a growl against his sleeve. To everyone’s relief, it pulled out clean. Instead of being barbed and triangular, the head had the long leaf shape meant to pierce a stag, or a man, deep into the organs.

He packed a handful of snow against the wound and showed Alec the arrow. “You were lucky. Your coat must have helped stop it. Micum, would you bring some water and a cup? Sebrahn—” He paused, looking around. A trail of small footsteps in the snow led back the way they’d come. Sebrahn hadn’t gotten far, but he was going as fast as he could through the snow.