Mercedes Lackey - Two-Edged Blade

The escape had turned into a rout; fighting, then running, then fighting again. Somehow they all managed to stay together; desperation gave them speed and cunning they didn’t know they had. They managed to leave their attackers behind in confusion, giving them just enough lead to get reorganized.

They headed north at top speed, taking advantage of a stream to break their trail, at least temporarily. At sunset, Lerryn had split the force, taking half of them with him, leaving half with his second in command. Shallan and Relli had gone off with the Captain; Kero had stayed with Icolan Ar Perdin, the second, a dour little man who had survived more routs than Kero cared to think about. The half with Lerryn had ridden south; Icolan took his group northward again, and a little east.

They hoped to confuse their pursuers enough to give both halves time to get to safety. But bad luck followed Icolan’s troops, for the Karsites made up their minds quickly on discovering the split trail, and chose their half as the ones to follow.

Bad luck, or a curse, Kero thought, as she guided

Hellsbane afoot through the darkness, stumbling now and again over a root or a rock. Some of the others were already muttering things to that effect, for it seemed uncanny, the way the Karsites had been able to find them after the split. No matter what they did, how carefully they covered their trail, if they stopped to rest even for a moment, a scout sent along the backtrail would return with the unwelcome news that they were still being followed.

She held her mare’s rein loosely; Hellsbane’s ears and nose were infinitely superior to hers, and Hellsbane had twice been able to detect followers before Kero had.

Unless I unshielded, and looked for them with my thoughts. No—I’m afraid to. What if they’ve got someone stronger than me with them?

Warrl had warned her about the dangers of meeting someone unfriendly, with a far more powerful Gift. Such a one could take Kero over, hearing with her ears, seeing with her eyes.

For everyone’s sakes, I can’t take the chance, she decided. As long as I don’t crack my shields, I’m safe. If I do—I could be risking more than myself. I could betray the entire group.

That was something she would not chance, however tempting it was to use that ability of hers to check on their pursuers.

Hellsbane’s natural sensitivities of ear and nose were why they were tailmost, ready to call an alert in case the Karsites found them yet again.

It might have been a curse following them; it might also have been the workings of Sunlord Vkandis, the Karsite god. Kero was pretty certain that she had seen priestly sorts among those “bandits” but hadn’t had any hard evidence although she’d reported her suspicion. Lerryn had just shrugged; he’d never had any dealings with a deity or demi-deity, friendly or otherwise, and so was inclined to doubt the power of clerics. But Kero had a feeling that it had been the priests of the Sunlord that had gotten word back to Karse of the siege, and not by physical messengers, either. As Kero had every reason to know, there were other means of communication besides physical messengers.

They were practically on the Karsite Border, and Kero had heard from Tarma the kind of proprietary interest a deity could have for Her people—and the ways in which She could, if She chose, intervene—down on the Dhorisha Plains. If the Sunlord chose to enlighten His priests as to the location of their avowed enemies—well, it certainly wouldn’t be unheard of.

Or there was another, more arcane, explanation. The religion of the Sunlord forbade the use of magic. But the ability to work magic was both an inborn Gift as well as the result of study. So where did all the mages born in Karse go?

Kero had her suspicions, and had ever since she found out about the prohibition. The mages born with the Gift went into the priesthood, of course; the priests of the Sunlord could easily say their magics were god-granted miracles, and no one would be any the wiser.

That could be the other reason for being pursued; they could have a mage on their trail—and since the hedge-wizard Tarres had gone with Lerryn’s half of the Skybolts, it didn’t take much guessing to figure which half would be followed. The half without the mage attached would be much easier for another mage to track, especially since Tarres was undoubtedly working his earth-magics to hide the mercs from mage-sight. Kero had tried to communicate with her sword to get the damned thing to cover their trail magically, but it had been as unresponsive as an ordinary piece of steel.

The trail ahead opened up into a clearing; suddenly there were stars overhead instead of interlacing tree branches. Kero picked out the sounds of many horses and a few whispers, and deduced that Icolan had decided to halt them.

“What’s up?” she whispered, as soon as she came within range of the closest shadow-shape.

“Conference,” the shape whispered back, one hand on its horse’s nose to keep it silent. Not a halt for rest, then. That was a disappointment, but hardly a surprise. Kero turned Hellsbane around and pointed her head along the backtrail, making use of the mare’s superior senses to keep watch for the rest of the party. “Guard,” she said into the gray’s ear, and slipped the rein over her arm, leaving Hellsbane relatively free. While the mare guarded the trail with ears and nose, Kero slipped her water bottle off the front of the saddle and took a long-wished-for drink. Her stomach was too knotted with fear and tension to even think about eating, but some of the others had taken advantage of the brief rest to snatch a mouthful or feed a handful of grain to a horse.

Finally the word went around the circle; “There’s a fork in the game trail. We’re splitting again.”

Kero sighed; it was a logical move, but not one she relished. And it meant they’d be moving on into the night. She patted Hellsbane’s neck comfortingly; the mare wasn’t going to like this either.

They split twice more during the grueling, half-blind trek through the darkness, and when dawn trickled pale pink light over the hilltops and through the thick trees, there were no more than twenty riders left in Kero’s group. She didn’t know any of them terribly well, except for the leader, the head of all the scout-groups, a colorless woman known only as Lyr.

She mounted with the rest at Lyr’s signal, and they formed a group around her. “I know you’re all tired,” the scout-leader said in a flat voice, “But we still have at least one party on our tail. I’m going to try something; back there in the dark they may have lost track of who was following what, and if you’re with me on this, I want to head straight across the Border into Karse itself.”

The hard-bitten man in worn leathers on Kero’s right coughed as if he was holding back an exclamation or objection. Lyr turned her expressionless eyes on him for a moment.

“I know what you’re thinking, Tobe,” she said, with no sign of rancor. “You’re thinking I’m crazy. Can’t say I blame you. Here’s my thought: if we head straight across the Border, open like, and stop trying to hide the backtrail, they may think they’ve gotten confused in the dark and they’re following one of their own groups. Border won’t be patrolled that thickly here; they save the heavy patrols for farther in.”

“They do?” said a stocky girl that had just joined before the beginning of this campaign, a brown-haired, brown-eyed, brown-skinned girl with “farmer” all over her. But she had to be good, or she wouldn’t be a Skybolt. “Why?”

“Bandits,” Lyr said succinctly. “Real ones. Karsites let ’em stay here, both to confuse the issue when their regulars come across raiding, and to discourage their own people from trying to cross over into someplace else. So there’s a kind of buffer zone along here that the Karsite patrols don’t bother with.”