Chapter 15
A moon and a blustery week of storms later—five weeks as the hominids reckoned things—Rainfall and a group of local men and boys stood on one of the wall-crossed hills of Tumbledown, speaking with the local shepherds and farmers.
And Stog, incredibly.
Stog stood in this distant field with some other working beasts, all muddy, thin, and miserable.
The expedition had come to fruition easily enough. Wistala, after looking at a map and taking a trip to the nearest hilltop with a good view south of the bridge, decided that the same road Rainfall had in his charge cut through near Tumbledown—or Hesstur, as Rainfall insisted on calling it.
“One of the eight sister cities from the founding of Hypat,” Rainfall explained after Wistala described the three hills and wet ground in between. “It was burned in one of the barbarian wars.”
A good deal more history followed this, but without being able to see the battles and kings and generals and so on Rainfall spoke of, the names and dates left Wistala’s head almost as soon as they entered it. If only hominids could pass mind-pictures down!
Rainfall had no difficulty pulling together some men and their sons for the trip. The killing of the troll had given Rainfall something of a local reputation, Wistala guessed, and it even attracted one of the thanedom’s low priests. She seemed a sturdy woman, in her black robe and tassled hat, white hair at her temples making the rest of her black hair, cut so evenly at the bottom, it might be mistaken as a helmet, look darker.
Wistala had to watch it all from a distance. Her presence had to be kept hidden for her—and Rainfall’s—safety.
They made quite a procession. Thick-shouldered farmers and their thicker-shouldered horses, Jessup with a smart new leather work apron driving his cart loaded with feed for hominid and animal, the low priest with boys in tow, showing them strange roadside mushrooms, flowers, and berries. Rainfall walked at the head, wearing layers of heavy traveling clothes, leather-fringed sandals, a cloak, and even a short, slightly curved sword with a guard at the hilt.
She traveled ahead of the group on the overnight journey south, moving before dawn and after dusk and sleeping out the day while the others caught up. Now and then she met with Rainfall on the road a little ahead of the party. The journey was uneventful, save for some boys throwing dung-balls from cover as they passed through a muddy village. One clod hit Rainfall in the thigh.
“Wish I’d seen that,” Wistala said.
“Boys being boys. Their parents should soap their tongues until they learn civil expression, though,” Rainfall said. “ ‘Elvish maggot.’ Right in the heart of the village, too. An old woman bowed and apologized for the insult. Perhaps it was the star.”
Wistala had not seen the golden device before. It had eight short points around the edge and a blue jewel at the center. Some mark of his status as the bridge-keeper and road-warden, she guessed.
So, led by Rainfall’s star, they came to Tumbledown and saw the field with Stog.
The low priest—her name was Feeney—and Rainfall conducted the negotiations with the locals of Tumbledown. Then both sides withdrew, the newcomers to their tents with a purchased sheep, the shepherds and smallholders to their cottages and ricks and cots.
Rainfall wandered the woods until Wistala caught up to him. They sat together on an old wall dividing one part of identical forest from another.
“I let Mod Feeney do the talking. We will split whatever we find exactly in half with the locals. They claim that the ruins have been explored a dozen times a generation, and that they’ve been stripped to the last lumik.”
“Lumik?”
“A bit of art that throws off light when you rub it.”
“Then they’re doubly wrong. I’ll show you one when we enter. I saw Stog in with the other animals.”
“What other—? Oh, the farmers and so on?”
“Yes,” Wistala said. “I didn’t dare approach. There were horses, and I was afraid they’d scream their heads off.”
“You are certain? Many mules look alike.”
“Yes. Though he looked thin and dirty.”
“I’ll try to buy him back tomorrow.”
The stupid beast didn’t deserve Rainfall’s kindness. “I’ll see if I can talk to him during the day tomorrow,” Wistala said. “Assuming they don’t have him pulling loads of rocks or whatever work these humans do.”
“The night is wasting.”
Rainfall never seemed to need sleep, though his face was less animated at night than at other times.
They walked into Tumbledown. A dog barked in the distance, and they stood close to a wall, but they met no further challenge. Soon they were at the triple broken arches that marked the way down to the rats’ underground realm.
“I smell bats,” Rainfall said. “I should hate to get bitten—they carry sickness.”
Rainfall opened his satchel. He fiddled with a brass bowl that smelled of oil. Then he poured some powder that smelled faintly of rotten eggs into a rough stone channel, and drew a piece of wood all splintered at one end across it. The powder and the wood burst into flame. He touched it to the closed top of the bowl, and a flame glowed.
“All that effort for a bit of fire?” Wistala asked. “You should have just asked me.”
“I couldn’t impose on your great gift for something so mundane as a little light,” Rainfall said. “Doesn’t a wise dragon keep her fire bladder ready?”
“I don’t see a battle breaking out between your construction gang and the sheepherders. There’d be plenty left to torch some rats if they swarm.”
“Show me the way, my shining friend.”
“Fair warning: you’ll get dirty.”
She led him down. When they reached the passage that had the glow bulb, Wistala showed it to him.
“It is a lumik,” Rainfall said, rubbing it so it glowed. “This alone will pay for feasts all the way back to Mossbell, and buy Stog besides.” He pried it loose and worked it with a bit of cloth until it shone like a slice of moon brought underground.
The underground still smelled of bits of worms and rats. Rainfall just squeezed down the dug passage to the sewer. It was drier than Wistala remembered. Rats yeeked at them from the corners as they fled the light.
Had she really been here? Fought a channel-back? The sewers felt like some mind-picture from a distant ancestor.
Rainfall followed, scratching marks onto the walls here and there with a piece of soft stone that left white traces. “I don’t have your tunnel sense, my dear.”
She led him into the room where she and Yari-Tab had fought the rats and spoken to the old milk-eyed specimen. Rainfall didn’t mind the smell or the filth thick on his sandals. He spoke of false walls fallen away as his eyes wandered ever upward, to old writings and chipped drawings running the edge of the chamber’s ceiling. He stepped over to an old doorway, rusting hinges still projected out into a space where the wood had long since rotted away. He reached up and marked the lintel with an X.
“It’s down these stairs,” Wistala said, standing at the gap to a circular passage. Rat eyes glinted in the shadows.
“There’s a high crypt this way—No, I shan’t disturb any bodies.”
Wistala wouldn’t have cared if he wanted to juggle the skulls of kings. But Rainfall continued: “Sets of edicts can sometimes be found with a thane’s remains, or biographies. Both are fascinating reading.”
She caught a whiff of precious metals on the stairs. “I don’t dare go any farther.”
Rainfall’s hand dropped to the hilt of his sword. “Ho! Is there danger?”
“Only from me. A dragon’s heart can grow fierce at the sight of gold. The last time I came down these steps—it could have ended badly for my friend.”
He raised the crystal, and sharp shadows sprang up on the stairs. As he went down, the shadows retreated and advanced as though terrified of the light. His footsteps were so light, she could only just hear them.
“Rah-ya, Wistala, here’s a hoard worthy of a dragon,” he called up. “Silver and gold and baser coins.”
“Will you be able to find it again?”
“I’m sure of it. I return. Close your eyes, for I’ve a handful of gold.”
She shut her nostrils, too. Her mouth went wet, and her stomach growled at the faint smell.
Rainfall spoke in her ear. “Now open your mouth.”
She complied, and felt a hard fall on her tongue.
Rainfall spoke: “Just a mouthful of the best silver I could find.”
The coins slipped easily down her throat, greased by the thick saliva the smell of metals brought to her mouth.
“But you need the coin,” she objected. (Once the coins were safe in her stomach!)
“I matched need against deserve, and deserve won. I have some proofs of the money resting there still in my bag.” He pulled on the strap of his satchel so the coins within jingled.
Wistala napped out the morning light under a cool slab in a quiet corner of Tumbledown, concealed by a cascade of runners dropped by the ferns clinging above. She’d gone to the pasture to look for Stog, but only a mare and her colt remained. The men must have put him to work.
She felt a soft nuzzle under her chin. “Tchatlassat?” came a familiar purr.
Wistala came wide awake in a flash. “Yari-Tab?”
She’d grown wide-bodied feasting on rats, or had a bellyful of young, perhaps. “I smelled you as I was finishing my night’s prowl and followed the trail. Such doings in the Tumbledown. Digging by my entrance to the Deep Run. What’s the hunt?”
Wistala had to think for a moment—she was so used to speaking in Elvish. “Hominids come for the gold.”
“Will there be fighting? The rats would like that.”
“No, my host has arranged a diversion.”
“Serves them right, savage beasts. But when mice can’t be found—”
Wistala raised her head and stretched. “Sister! I’ve a wonderful idea!”
“Yes!” Yari-Tab said, settling down in the warm spot left by her throat. “A good nap till noontime. Then perhaps a sunbath.”
“No. I know of a catless barn that has the mice running wild. Come along to it, and I can promise you all the hunting you like. Perhaps a little goat milk now and then. The owner is a kindly sort.”
Yari-Tab fixed eyes on her. “Warm and dry?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, tchatlassat! I would like that.”
“You deserve it. I’ll explain things to Rainfall. Once he knows that you’re the spring from where this new stream of wealth flows, he’ll take you in. I’m sure of it.”
With Yari-Tab running scout, Wistala made it to a hillside downwind from the sheep and watched events beneath the triple arch from an overhanging slab. Shirtless men brought the coin out in small buckets, to be laid on a clean white sheet spread out on the ground in front of the hole that had been widened. Feeney and another man dressed in similar robes and tassled hat passed the coins back and forth before moving them to a chest—in the case of the visitors—or a low trough.
Stog made an appearance, dragging a sledge piled with firewood. The man leading the mule struck him about the flanks to drive him on, and Wistala felt her fire bladder pulse. Poor Stog—he was an extraordinarily strong beast.
Yari-Tab grew bored with events and fell asleep in the sun.
By evening they’d brought out the last of the small hoard of coins. Rainfall emerged from the tunnel dirtier than ever, holding what looked like a platter of considerable weight wrapped in a piece of leather. He showed it to the pair of priests.
Wistala couldn’t see much from her vantage. It looked like a piece of pinkish stone, but the low priests both touched it as they spoke. After they nodded, Rainfall took it away to Jessup’s wagon, spoke to him, and placed it on the high driving seat.
As the sun set, the gathered hominids set up a feast. A bonfire was lighted with the pile of wood Stog dragged. Some of the shepherds took out pipes and drums and small hand harps as others roasted a pig.
“That’s a mouthwatering smell,” Wistala said.
“Aye, but I must hunt,” Yari-Tab said. “I’ve kittens growing fast within, and they’re hungry, too.”
Wistala marked Rainfall wandering the opposite hill outside the bonfire light, taking a small bite now and then from a joint of the remaining mutton from last night’s meal. He probably meant to find her and offer it. “Wait. I might return with something tastier than a sewer rat.”
The moonlight-washed ruins frowned down on the figures moving about the bonfire, as though waiting for the merrymakers to disperse so they could return to their gradual collapse.
Wistala saw Rainfall, smelled the mutton, and rattled her griff against her scales to attract his attention.
Rainfall turned and opened his mouth to speak, but a thundering sound rolled through the night. Hoofbeats!
Two lines of riders crested the southernmost hill and rode down toward the bonfire.
Wistala counted seven . . . eight. One carried a high standard, a banner suspended from a crossbar the length of an ax-handle. Wistala’s night-sharp eyes distinguished a thin-legged, long-necked bird standing out white on the material of the standard.
“Dis!” Rainfall said. “Bandits, you think? Go and keep hidden, Wistala. Oh, there can’t be fighting!”
He tossed the mutton shank in her direction and ran toward the bonfire, his hair making a sound like leaves hitting a wall on a windy night.
Wistala wouldn’t leave the mutton to prowling rats and dogs. She returned it to Yari-Tab at the angled overhang.
Yari-Tab sniffed the greasy, ragged joint. “Tchatlassat, you’re a wonder!”
“Please stay here,” Wistala said, an eye toward the center of the three hills. “There’s a new group arrived in Tumbledown. I don’t like the look of it.”
Wistala circled around through the ruins and found all a-tumult. Shepherd boys guided their flocks off the grassy hills, dogs barked everywhere, and around the bonfire, the celebrants had divided into two huddled groups.
At the edge of the fire, the men stood their horses, the banner in the center and another man, rather shorter but above the rest thanks to the size of his horse, speaking with Rainfall.
The riders had thrown back their cloaks to reveal metal plates fixed about their chests, hands on sword hilts, save for the tall one with the bird standard. She let the wind carry the words, along with the aroma of roast pig, humans, and the horses, to her.
“I’m thane here, elf. All your legalisms and tricky wordplay won’t change that.”
“You claim to be thane here, Vog. The maps say differently. The ruins of Hesstur belong to the Directory. You interfere with one of its agents.”
Vog, the short man on the tall horse, laughed. He snapped his fingers in the air. “That’s for the Directory. All sound and no presence. Those doddards couldn’t muster an Imperial Host if Hypat itself had barbarians climbing the First Walls.”
“They could if their thanes attended to their duties instead of wine and hunts.”
“Do you mean to insult me?” Vog sputtered.
Wistala crept around toward the newcomers’ horses.
“I beg your pardon for not making myself understood. If I meant to insult you, I would point out that your roads are so overgrown that a wagon can hardly pass without being tangled in branches, that there are a dozen washouts to a vesk at least, or that I cannot distinguish the difference between a pig-chasing dog’s collar and your mens’ livery, or that you act and speak in the manner of a barbarian warlord rather than a Hypatian Thane, who would dismount to address a fellow citizen.”
Vog put his hand on his sword hilt. “How dare you—”
“How dare you, sir,” Rainfall roared. Wistala wouldn’t have thought him capable of making such a sound; she froze in her tracks where she crept behind the horses. “How dare you touch your sword when addressing a Knight of the Directory, a Temple Star, and a former Judge Imperial.”
Vog’s mount danced backwards from Rainfall’s fury, unsettling the other horses. Wistala heard a rattle, saw one of the men take a handle with a chain leading back to some metal objects that looked like small metal balls set with dragon teeth.
When Vog had his mount under control again, he leaned forward. “I dare because old titles don’t frighten me any more than old moss-backed elves. You’re badly in need of a hiding, prissfall. I’ve a mind to give you one.”
“Your having a mind to do anything beyond drawing breath comes as a shock to me,” Rainfall said.
“Insult! Bind him!” Vog shouted.
Wistala, at last upwind of the horses, rattled her griff as loudly as she could and loosed her urine. Once before, in her journey with Auron, she’d used her urine to scare off a prowling bear. This time the trick worked to spectacular effect. The horses jumped and plunged as though ghost-ridden. Four riders fell, Vog jumped off, and the rest held on to mane and rein for life and limb as their mounts bolted.
The men of the wading-bird standard must have blamed Rainfall for the madness of their horses. They picked themselves up and, following Vog’s example, drew their swords, or swung the whirling metal ball in the case of the man with the chain weapon. It made a sound as it cut the air that reminded Wistala of eagle cries.
The two camps scattered, plucking up their children in the case of the shepherds, while the visitors retreated to Jessup’s wagon and Mod Feeney.
Rainfall sniffed the air and chuckled. “Put away your weapons, Vog. A pile of old coins isn’t worth blood being spilled.”
Vog snorted. “See, men of Lossend! Just like that Praskallian said: ‘Elvish insolence ends at the sight of steel.’ ”
“Sight of steel,” repeated the man with the whirling chain.
Vog and his men took a step closer. “Stop!” Mod Feeney shouted. “This is hallowed ground, of temples old and proud. The gods weep.”
Rainfall drew his thin saber with one hand, detatched his cloak, and whipped it about his arm. “Vog! Remember yourself!”
“You’ve breathed your last insult, elf,” Vog said. “At him, now.”
In later years, Wistala only remembered Rainfall’s lower limbs. He fought as though performing one of the little jigs he did when happy, as on the morning his hair began to grow back in. The power of blocks and strikes came out of his legs and hips, not his arm, extended as stiffly as though it and the blade made one long weapon.
In a flash, Rainfall punched a hole through Vog’s ear. He sidestepped, knelt, and sent his next thrust into the kneecap of the man with the whirling chain. As the second man fell to the side of his injured limb, Rainfall got out of the way of the whirling balls, which wrapped around the man’s helm and went home all about the head and neck.
He fell and did not move again.
Rainfall threw his cloak-wrapped arm around the sword of the next man coming in—Wistala heard a krak! and as Rainfall stepped away, the sword fell and the man clutched his injured limb.
Rainfall rewrapped his cloak about his arm as he put his sword-point before the final pair.
The last two stood shoulder-to-shoulder as they advanced on Rainfall, swords held in both hands in front of them, each urging the other to close and occupy the blood-tipped point while the second finished the job.
Finally one worked up the nerve to raise the sword above his head. With a brave cry he came forward, struck a blow that cleaved the figure before him—
But the figure was Rainfall’s cloak, falling to the ground anyway. Rainfall’s sword penetrated the thick muscle at the attacker’s backside. The second man, seeing his lone ally hop about cursing, thought it best to drop his sword and run.
Vog rejoined the fight with a cry, the side of his head red with blood.
Rainfall parried, parried, ducked out of the way, parried again. Wistala heard the pants of both opponents, but Vog’s was the more labored.
Rainfall spoke next: “Blood has washed away whatever quarrels, old and new, we’ve had. Let us cry ‘settled’ and remember the example of those who built Hesstur’s walls and columns.”
Hooves sounded from the darkness, and two of Vog’s men trotted up, one with the bird-standard muddied. The thane looked around at his wounded, grunting men.
“I’ve been a fool,” Vog said. “I’ll beg your pardon and bury the sword-point.” He plunged his weapon into the dirt.
The riders relaxed atop their horses.
Rainfall nodded and turned. “Mod Feeney, let’s look to the injured.” He wiped his sword on his cloak and resheathed it.
Wistala didn’t like the look of the man Vog, the way he turned to his side and glanced around. So when he sprang forward, a dagger aimed at Rainfall’s back, she was already in motion.
Just before the blade went home, Rainfall twisted—too late. The dagger still plunged in.
Wistala’s dragon-dash had carried her only a third of the way—
Rainfall let out the softest of tired sighs like a man hanging up his hat at the end of a long day. He fell to the earth as Feeney screamed, perhaps at the infamy, or perhaps at the sight of a drakka shooting across the ruins like an arrow.
Vog twirled his dagger. “You forget, star-polisher, that victory’s all that matters in the end. And tonight the victory’s—”
As victory was so important to him, Wistala felt it only right that it should be the last intelligible word to pass his lips. Her spring cut off the rest.
Terror took the horses of the mounted men yet again.
She landed hard atop Vog’s back, sii and saa extended and digging. Vog squeaked, rabbitlike, as she opened him up under the rib cage. She took out a mouthful of neck to be sure of him.
She hurried to Rainfall’s side. “Oh, Fa—Rainfall. Speak!”
His eyes still lived, anyway. They fixed on her. “Dragon-daughter.”
Footsteps. Mod Feeny rushed forward, a pickax held high.
“I’m helping him, you fool,” Wistala said in her best Parl.
She pulled up, still with the point raised, and Wistala made ready to jump out of the way.
But here was Jessup, chasing her down. He put a hand on Feeney’s. “Hold. She’s friendly.”
Rainfall managed to raise his hand. “I still breathe,” he whispered.
“We need to leave,” Wistala said. “Get him on the cart. Don’t forget the coin.” To Jessup: “I’ll meet you back at Mossbell. If there’s a hunt, I’ll confuse them.” A strange clarity had seized her; she had no idea where the words came from, but they flowed steadily. “Gather those horses and that mule there so more may ride. And weapons, that you might overawe any in the village. Vog’s a blackheart and deserves to lose all.”
“I’m not leaving the injured lying in the mud,” Feeney said.
“Then stay and see how your kindness is rewarded.”
Next Stog was there, the bonfire revealing the mud on his sides and the filth about his hooves, a broken rope dangling. “Wistala. Strange fortune brings us together again. Forgive—”
Feeney and Jessup just stared in wonder at the mule, nickering and tossing his head at the drakka.
“No time for words, Stog. Do you wish to return to Mossbell?”
“Is clover sweet? Of course.”
“Then you can do me a favor, and bear a burden back.”
“I’ll carry the master to the icy tundra if I must, and stomp any—”
“No,” Wistala said. “He’s riding in the cart. I want you to carry a cat.”
Stog ended up carrying two cats, Yari-Tab and a night-black female named Jalu-Coke, who had a litter of rambunctious kittens.
“She’s a good friend and a stalking good huntress,” Yari-Tab said. “She hears like a bat. Speaking of which, I’ve seen her leap and bring one down—”
“Fascinating,” Wistala said, forestalling more anecdotes. Once cats got talking about themselves, they’d go on about whisker length or tail-balancing until the sun came up, and she didn’t have that kind of time. Or Rainfall didn’t.
Jessup fixed a thick knit blanket and a bread box on Stog’s back. The cats and kittens rode easily enough.
Rainfall, his shirt bound about his waist, rested in the back of the cart, gripping his leather-wrapped treasures to his chest. He begged them to leave the shepherds’ share of coin.
Mod Feeney was the last to leave the ruins. She bandaged the foemen and spoke many words about how lucky they were to come away with only two dead, and any pursuit would just call up another vengeful fury of red tooth and claw, for the treasure was cursed and only she held the ward-key. Then she hurried down the road after the receding creak of the wagon-wheel.
Wistala watched it all from the ruin-haunted hillside nearest the road. The wounded were helped off to the hovels of the shepherds, leaving the bodies of the two slain men to the rats.
The old milk-eyed rat’s prophecy had come true.
Vog’s men made a pursuit of it that night after all. As Wistala trotted up the side of the road, she heard them a long way off, a faint but growing sound of hooves. If they’d walked or trotted their mounts, they probably would have caught up to the plodding cart anyway, but perhaps the sight of two bodies, one belonging to their thane, had inflamed them into recklessness. Besides, they were armed and arrayed, and their foes humble.
As to the stories of a scaled beast, confused accounts by injured men and shepherd boys watching from afar might make a freak encounter with a channel-back more than it seemed, and as for the warning of the priestess, trumped-up midwives are always making dire predictions.
How the coin figured into their reckoning of risks, vengeance, and rewards Wistala could guess.
She had to delay them. But how?
Improvise, Mother’s voice said to her. She couldn’t outfight the men, or outrun the horses. Horses . . .
Rainfall was right about one thing: the road here was in terrible shape. On the north side of the river, it was trim, dry, and even. Here it was sunken, rutted, and holed, with either side of the verge thick with plants.
Rainfall was right about the washes—a veritable stream cut through the road a little ahead. It had eroded until it was as deep as her neck, almost as treacherous as a troll trap.
Slowing up the men and slowing up their horses were one and the same. Would a troll trap do that?
Wistala went to the wash and placed branches in a grid. Next she tore up twigs and leaves and covered the wash as best as she could. She felt bad for the poor heedless brutes—and the four-legged beasts under them—but they would bring battle.
There was a chance that the men would just leap their horses across the wash. But with a long chase behind and possibly ahead . . .
Wistala concealed herself a little behind the trap, by the side of the road in the thick undergrowth, listening to the growing noise and wondering how many riders this thane might have seeking vengeance.
She should have made it deeper. She cleaned the moss off a flat stone and sharpened her claws against it as she tried to count the growing hoofbeats.
At last they came, emerging as a solid mass out of the night, filling the tree-circled road like a rush of dirty water coming down a drainspout. Perhaps six or eight. No, ten, counting a last few with that bird-banner at the back. Too many for her to fight, then.
The men urged lather-soaked horses on with bits of rope or sword hilt. They passed her in a solid wall of hair, leather, steel, and thunder.
Then they hit her trap.
A horse went flat on its face, throwing its rider. The next behind was agile enough to leap out of the way, but the third beast skidded on its hooves as it tried to stop, and went into the wash sideways. Another behind jumped into the woods, dismounting its rider on a branch, and yet another rider went over his horse’s head as it skidded to a stop.
The banner hung almost above her, where the back three had stopped in safety to laugh at the chaos ahead.
Wistala hated that stitched-up bird. She aimed and spat a thin stream of fire up into it. It burst into flames immediately, and in the subsequent alarm, she quietly backed down the road to cross ahead.
“Elvish magic!” a man shouted, stomping on the flames.
Wistala’s nostrils flared. Superstitious hominids. Imagine my tricks taken for spellcraft! She stifled a self-satisfied prrum.
“That old leaf-head is a sorcerer!” another agreed.
“Our horses have grown treacherous. He whispers to them on the wind, I’ll set my hand on it!”
Wistala slunk across the road once all eyes turned to the ring of men in argument.
The second rider, the one whose mount managed to dodge the first fall, stayed on his horse. He wore an odd double cloak, one hanging from each shoulder.
“Someone help Plov,” he said. “How many are hurt?”
“Two cannot ride,” a gruff voice from the group said.
More mumbling. “And three more will not,” a shriller voice added. “That elf isn’t the only one stabbed from behind by Vog. His landsmen have felt their purse strings cut more than once. Gold is not enough of a lure for us to face sorcery to get it back.”
“That leaves four to ride with me!” the two-cloak man said. “Hurry, before they’re back to the bridge. The cowardly can tend to the injured horses, as that’s all they’re fit for.”
“A man who promises murder to a priestess on the Old Road at night should be careful about that word,” the gruff voice said. “You’re down to three, Vorl; I ride no farther with you.”
“More gold for us, then. Take up the banner!”
Wistala was having a hard time picking out the words as the argument continued. She found an oak with heavy branches stretching above the road and swarmed up it. She tested how far her tail could drop. Then she searched the underbranches and cracked off a drooping limb almost bereft of leaves. She tested her tail’s grip on it.
The hoofbeats came again, and she just had time to press her belly to the limb overhanging the road, watching the riders through the gaps in the leaves. They came on this time at something more than a trot and less than a gallop, the two-cloaked rider the others called Vorl at the lead.
The third man in line held what was left of the scorched bird-banner.
“Let’s have a song, men,” Vorl shouted. “Some airs of wine and women, and all the diversions that gold may buy!”
“How about—?” the last man said, but screamed when he saw the branch swing down from above, striking the rider with the banner full in the face.
Wistala felt the impact run up her tail with some satisfaction.
The banner bearer flipped backwards across his horse’s rump, his heels high and his cloak fluttering. He hit hard and the horse behind jumped to avoid hitting him.
Wistala flattened herself into the branch, barely daring to peep at events with one eye.
All the horses snorted and danced, probably smelling Wistala above.
“What now?” Vorl rasped.
“The tree hit him,” the fourth man shouted, getting his horse out from under the oak. “A limb full of twigs reached down and struck Gleshick full in the face. It was the tree!”
“Vorl,” the other rider said, searching the dark overhang of branches. “Perhaps it’s time to leave reins and take up bedcups.”
“My horse cannot be controlled!” the last in line said, spurring his mount away. The beast galloped southward, its rider’s hindquarters lifted high as he hung on. “An evil magic drives it! Good luck!”
“Brothel spawn!” Vorl shouted at the receding figure. “Come.
We’re a short way from House Gamkley. He’ll remember the thane and mount his household.”
“What about Gleshick?”
“A bloody nose and a night on the gravel will teach him not to sleep in the saddle. Let’s hurry! Perhaps we can catch up to that fool and talk some sense into him.”
They galloped off south, and the empty-saddled horse moved to follow them in a halfhearted manner. Wistala dropped from the tree onto its back.
She clung as best as she could, digging her claws into the mane as the men did their fingers.
The horse bucked and screamed. Wistala hung on with all four sets of claws.
“I’m not here to hurt you,” Wistala said. “Bear me but short run the other way, and I’ll release you.”
“No!”
“Otherwise you’ll not live another minute,” Wistala said. “I haven’t had horse since I was a hatchling, and your quivering makes me long for the taste.”
The horse tore off up the road north. They hurried through the village where Rainfall had been abused and were out of it again before any but the barking dogs woke.
As their racket faded behind and they reentered the woods, the horse tried to knock Wistala off its back by passing under branches, a difficult proposition as she could flatten herself on the horse’s back better than any man and still keep her grip. Wistala struck its rump with her tail. “Keep to the center.”
“Pity! Exhausted—”
They left the thicker woods and came to open, rocky ground that smelled of sheep and yellow late-summer wildflowers. Wistala saw distant shepherd fires to both sides of the road. Quartz veins in the protruding rocks caught the moonlight. The river ridge broke the horizon in the distance, notched where the road cut through it. She knew that notch. The river ran just beyond.
“Up this far rise, and you’ll be done,” Wistala said.
The horse quickened his step but breathed more heavily than ever, snorting and gasping as though each labored breath might be his last. Wistala made out the wagon cresting the notch.
“Well enough,” Wistala said, hopping off. “Go where you like, but on the other side of the river—”
The horse tore off down the road, away from the fearful dragon-smell.
“Stupid brute,” Wistala muttered. Ah well, of such mentalities meals are made. She trotted at her best pace after the wagon. As the sky grew pink and then orange, she breached the rise.
She couldn’t help but think that the notch would make another fine ambush site. Its steep sides meant that with a little work they could block the bend ahead, and she could rain fire upon anyone at their heels. . . .
And here was the wagon. She scrambled up the ridge—her hearts beat fast and hard at the sight of the river and the bridge—then got ahead of it.
She counted heads. Each face was drawn and exhausted from the long flight. One was missing: that priestess, Mod Feeney. Had she gone off the road?
“Jessup!” she called when they came within the sound of her voice. “Jessup! Does Rainfall still live?”
“The avenger calls!” Jessup said.
What has that man been telling the others? He halted the wagon and set the brake.
“Rainfall asks for you,” Jessup shouted. “He begs you to join him.”
Wistala came forward.
“That’s a dragon?” one of the men said. “I’ve yearling pigs that weigh more.”
The horses didn’t like her smell, and only Stog stood quietly next to the wagon, cat-filled breadbox on his back as the other brutes stamped and danced.
Wistala jumped into the wagon, and some of the men gasped at the quick move.
Rainfall’s skin had darkened, like fresh game-meat exposed to air. He sat propped up on a sort of cushion of bags of horse feed. A piece of marbled stonecraft, with letters deeply cut and coated with time-tarnished metal, sat at his side. He rubbed it absently as a man might pet a dog while conversing.
“Wistala, daughter,” Rainfall said. “You are here.”
“And glad to see you still alive.”
“Jessup, drive on,” he said with some energy. “The sooner we’re through Mossbell’s gates—” He winced at some inner pain as the wagon lurched into motion.
“How is it?” Wistala asked. Oh, the inadequacy of words, even tuneful Elvish! If he were a dragon, she could let him feel her concern. Let him know . . .
“I can’t move my legs, Wistala. The pain isn’t bad at all—if anything I’m cloudheaded. But such wounds . . . if I should succumb, you must bring Lada to Mossbell, look out for her until she is of age to run the place. I’ve told Mod Feeney, and I’ve told Jessup—” He sank back into the cushions again.
“What happened to that priestess?” Wistala asked.
“She rode ahead,” Jessup said from his seat. “Hammar has a healer more skilled than she.”
It would be hard to say who heard the pursuing hooves first, the horses or Wistala. Both startled.
“Jessup, try to get a little more out of the horses,” Rainfall said. “Whip them if you must.”
He turned his gaze on the drakka. “Wistala, if they catch up to the wagon, jump on Stog and take that bag of gold to Mod Feeney. She’ll see that a judge and a high priest come before the thane and restore Lada to her home.”
As dawn came up, some of the men began to run toward the bridge. Home stood just on the other side of the canyon. A more clear-headed one jumped on the lead wagon horse and urged it on.
As they came down the road—the incline helped speed the wagon—Wistala saw the first rider appear behind. Others, ten or eleven in all, came down in a long straggling line. She saw no sign of the bird-banner.
She looked ahead. A group of people stood on the bridge. She recognized Mod Feeney by her odd hat.
Behind, Vorl drew his sword and waved it forward, calling to his men.
Rainfall looked at the coming riders, moving at a pace to catch the wagon before it even crossed the bridge.
“Wistala, on Stog, now!” he gasped.
“No. Wait,” Wistala said, seeing the group ahead. What sort of warriors had Mod Feeney gathered at the thane’s borders? They seemed dreadfully undersized.
The wagon rattled past Feeney’s gathering, the horses’ hooves thundering on the wooden planks that bridged the central arch in the ancient masonry. The apron- and tunic-clad assortment were mostly women and children. Wistala guessed them to be families of those in Rainfall’s ill-fated expedition, from the way they waved and called to each other.
Jessup halted the column well across the bridge.
The men dismounted and embraced their wives and children. Many of the latter shrieked as they circled the cart with streamers tied to sticks. Curly-tailed dogs barked, adding to the happy chaos.
Wistala peeped at it all through gaps in the wagon-boards. Some of the dogs barked at her.
“For the last time, Wistala, take Stog and go!” Rainfall said. “Look, Vog’s armsmen come.”
“Your Feeney’s building a wall to stop them,” Wistala said, watching the activity behind.
Rainfall lifted himself a little higher. “What’s this?”
A strange sort of barrier was stretched across the bridge, mostly the women and children holding hands. Their men ran to their families, and Mod Feeney pointed them into place.
“Don’t let go of each other. Even if they ride straight for you,” Mod Feeney said over the clatter of the approaching hooves.
The riders slowed their horses, pulled up.
“What’s this supposed to be,” Vorl snarled.
“You’ll do no murder in our thanedom,” Mod Feeney shouted back.
“Then we’ll retrieve that elf and hang him from thane Vog’s high lintel,” Vorl said. “He stabbed my lord in the back.”
“I was there—it was Vog who did the backstabbing,” Mod Feeney said.
“Ha! Out of my way, or we’ll ride you down,” Vorl said. “Stirrup to stirrup now, my men.”
“Is it come to this?” Mod Feeney said back, her voice a little more high-pitched. “One Hypatian Thanedom riding down the children of another? High honors to carry home, the blood of babes on your horse’s hooves.”
“Enough, Vorl,” said the compatriot Wistala recognized from her oak-limb perch above the road. “Buy your way into the thane’s hall with different coin.”
“And Thane Vog not cold yet!” Vorl said. “How dare you—”
“How dare you lie to the men of House Gamkley. Beware, men. He lied to you about Vog’s death. He died a scoundrel. I should have spoken then, but I’ve been a fool. A fool drawn by promises and unearthed gold.”
Vorl brought his horse around, pointed it straight at Mod Feeney. His heels went out, and his spurs turned inward.
Wistala nerved herself to jump from the wagon. If Vorl rode through the line of people, she’d turn him into a pyre of burning cloak and horsehair. Nothing would reach the wagon but the stench of charred flesh—
The man who at last spoke the truth to Vorl’s company rode up and seized his horse by the throat latch. “Enough, Vorl. Remember the battles of our boyhood. Thanedom against thanedom at Ciril and Starkhollow. Would you see that repeated? Hammar has the friendship of barbarians and more besides, and he’s rich enough to hire mercenaries. Let us put away sword, bury Vog, and take counsel.”
“Elvish bewitchment, taking the heart out of you!” Vorl shouted, turning his horse south. “You’re all under it! I’ll call none of you my friends again.”
The others gave short head-bows to Mod Feeney and turned for the south end of the bridge.
The man who had grabbed Vorl’s horse looked at the linked-arm assembly and smiled. “My compliments on your battlements, Mod,” he said. He rode off.
Mod Feeney sank to her knees. “I should have turned to candle-selling and book-copying long ago,” she sighed.
“I’ll see her a high priestess if it’s my last act,” Rainfall said, falling back into his feedsack chair. A long brown leaf dropped from his hair. “Jessup,” he called. “Take me to Mossbell, that I might die clean in my bed.”