Mercedes Lackey - Two-Edged Blade

She had left Hellsbane drinking and got up on another ridge to look back about noon, and as she peered around her boulder, she saw the trackers still behind her, spotting them as they rode briefly in the open before taking to cover. This time they weren’t several ridges away; they were only one.

She swore pungently, every heartache and regret she’d been nursing since leaving Eldan forgotten. She had something more important to worry about than heartbreak. Survival.

Hellfires. They’re good. Better than I thought. And they were gaining on her with every moment she dallied.

She slid down the back of the ridge and slung herself up on the mare’s back, sending her out under the cover of more pine trees. And the only thing she could be grateful for was that the day was overcast and Hellsbane was spared the heat of the sun.

They’re going to catch up, she thought grimly. They know this area, and I don’t; that’s what let them get so close in the first place. I’m in trouble. And I don’t know if I’m going to get out of it this time.

She wanted to “look” back at her pursuers, tempted to use her Gift for the first time in a long time—

And stopped herself just in time.

That isn’t me, she realized, urging Hellsbane into greater speed as they scrambled down a gravel-covered slope. Something out there wants me to use my Gift, probably so they can find me. Or catch and hold me until they come.

She fought down panic; Hellsbane was a good creature, and bright beyond any ordinary horse, but if she panicked, so would Hellsbane, and the warsteed might bolt. If Hellsbane took it into her head to flee, Kero wasn’t sure she’d be able to stop her until she’d run her panic out.

And that could end in her broken neck, or the mare’s, or both.

Kero kept Hellsbane in the cover of the trees, even though this meant more effort than riding in the open. She looked automatically behind her as they topped the next hill, and saw not one, but two parties of pursuers; both coming down off the slope she’d just left, and both parties so confident of catching her now that they weren’t even trying to hide. They couldn’t see her, but they could see her trail; she wasn’t wasting any time trying to hide it.

They were perhaps a candlemark’s ride from her, if she stopped right now. The temptation to leave cover and make a run for it was very great. If she let Hellsbane run, she might be able to lose them as darkness fell.

Assuming that their horses weren’t fresh.

Hellsbane had been going since last night, and she couldn’t do much of a run at this point.

They could. And would.

Kero sent the mare across a section of open trail when they dropped out of sight, hoping to get across it before they got back into viewing range. This was one of the worst pieces of trail she’d hit yet; barely wide enough for a horse, bisecting a steep slope, with a precipitous drop down onto rocks on one side and an equally precipitous shale cliff on the other. No place to go if you slipped, and nowhere to hide if you were being followed.

She breathed a sigh of relief as they got into heavier cover before the hunters came into view. She hadn’t wanted to rush the mare, but her back had felt awfully naked out there.

Thunder growled overhead; Kero looked up, pulling Hellsbane up for a moment under the cover of a grove of scrub trees just tall enough to hide them. She hadn’t been paying any attention to the weather, but obviously a storm had been gathering while she fled westward, because the sky was black in the west, and the darkness was moving in very fast—

How fast, she didn’t quite realize, until lightning hit the top of a pine just ahead of her, startling Hellsbane into shying and bucking, and half-blinding her rider. The thunder that came with it did deafen her rider.

And the downpour that followed in the next breath damned near drowned her rider.

It was like standing under a waterfall; she couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of her. She dismounted and automatically peered through the curtain of rain back down the trail behind her—

Just in time to see it disappear, melting beneath the pounding rain. She stared in complete disbelief as the trail literally vanished, leaving her pursuers no clue as to where she had gone, or where she was going.

In fact, the part of the trail she and the mare were standing on was showing signs of possible disintegration....

Taking the hint, she took Hellsbane’s reins in hand and began leading her through the torrent of water. Streams poured down the side of the hill and crossed the trail; the water was ankle-deep, and carried sizable rocks in its churning currents. She found that out the hard way, as one of them hit her ankle with a crack that she felt, rather than heard.

She went down on one knee, eyes filling with tears at the pain—but this was not the time or the place to stop, no matter how much it hurt. She forced herself to go on, while icy water poured from the sky and she grew so numb and chilled that she couldn’t even shiver.

And grateful for the rescue; too grateful even to curse that errant rock. This—thing—came up so fast —she thought, peering at the little she could see of the footing ahead of her, leading Hellsbane step by painful step. It—could almost be—supernatural.

In fact, a suspicion lurked in the back of her mind perhaps Need had had something to do with it. There was no way of telling, and it could all be just sheer coincidence.

Still, there was no doubt that it had saved her.

Always provided she could find some shelter before it washed her away.

And wouldn’t that be ironic, she found herself thinking wryly. Saved from the Karsites only to drown in the storm! Whoever says the gods don’t have a sense of humor....

I’m glad Hellsbane can see, because I can’t. Kerowyn’s eyelids were practically glued shut with fatigue. She rode into the Skybolts’ camp in a fog of weariness so deep that she could hardly do more than stick to Hellsbane’s saddle. The mare wasn’t in much better case; she shambled, rather than walked, with her head and tail down, and Kero could feel ribs under her knee instead of the firm flesh that should be there.

She rode in with the rain, rain that had followed her all the way from beyond the Karsite Border. Or maybe she had been chasing a storm the entire time; she wasn’t sure. All she did know was that the rain had saved her, and continued to save her as she traveled—washing out her tracks as soon as she made them, for one thing. It also seemed as if it was keeping those supernatural spies of the Karsites from taking to the air, for another; at any rate she hadn’t felt those “eyes” on her from the moment the rain started to come down. And last of all, the mud and rain had completely exhausted her pursuers’ horses, who had none of Hellsbane’s stamina.

From the exact instant when the first storm hit, she’d been able to make her soggy way across Karse virtually unhindered. She hadn’t been comfortable, in fact, she spent most of the time wet to the skin and numb with cold, but she hadn’t had to worry about becoming a guest in a Karsite prison.

Her only real regret: she’d had to ride Hellsbane after the first storm slackened; that rock hadn’t broken her ankle, but it had done some damage. A bone-bruise, she thought. She wasn’t precisely a Healer, but that was what it felt like. She’d hated putting that much extra strain on the mare, but there was no help for it.

Luck or the sword or some benign godlet had brought her across the border at one of the rare Menmellith borderposts. She’d introduced herself and showed her Mercenary Guild tag, and her Skybolt badge; she’d hoped for a warm meal and a dry place to sleep, but found cold comfort among the army regulars.