Mercedes Lackey - Oathblood

She handed the food to Meri and climbed into the wagon herself, pleased to discover that Meri had taken the clothing in their packs and made a kind of nest out of it. "Hide most of that bread," she whispered, as she got in beside her sister and took back her bowl. "We'll need it for tomorrow."

She tasted her broth, and wished for Devid Cook; it wasn't horrible, but it was very flat, unseasoned, probably made by boiling unsalted dried meat. The journeybread wasn't any better, but when the bread was soaked in the broth it made a palatable mush that was warm, and it was probably better for their tender stomachs than real food would have been.

After that, there didn't seem anything more to do but sleep, so they curled up around each other to share the warmth of their bodies, and somehow, in spite of all the horrible things that had happened to them, they fell quickly and dreamlessly into sleep.

It wasn't even dawn when the camp roused and the men began packing things up, and not at all quietly either. There was a lot of cursing, groaning -- wounds had probably stiffened in the night, and so had muscles. Horses stamped and complained, harness jingled, but all of the sounds were very brisk and businesslike. They probably aren't taking any chances that someone might follow , Kira thought muzzily. They want to get as far away from the ambush as possible. The farther they are, the less likely that anyone will connect them to it.

Their helper poked his face into the wagon door just at that moment. "Need the bushes?" he asked. He looked friendlier today, and Kira found herself hoping he hadn't been part of the ambush. She didn't want to hate him.

They nodded, and he helped them out of the wagon again, then took them over to the side of the camp and pointed to some very thick evergreen bushes a little shorter than they were. "Keep your heads in sight, one of you, anyway," was all he said; they took the hint, went to the other side and relieved themselves quickly. At least he hadn't made them take care of it while he watched.

They continued to feign weakness and sickness as he escorted them back to the wagon. "Want breakfast? You won't get another chance till we stop, and that won't be until dark," he told them, and both of them shook their heads violently. "Right, then. In you go." Rather than wait for them to climb into the wagon, he picked each of them up in rum and left them on the floor. "Here-" He dropped in a water-skin beside them. "Got stomach troubles, you can't let yourself get all dried out. Drink that a bit at a time. Try and sleep; the less noise you make, the better off you'll be. He doesn't want any trouble, and he's not one to cross."

Then he closed the door, and once again, closed in the cold darkness, they heard the bar drop across it outside.

Well, this time at least we have food and water, that nice fur robe, and we've padded the floor. She didn't want to risk making any conversation that might be overheard, so she curled back up in the still-warm fur robe and after a moment of hesitation, Meri curled up beside her. She shoved their padding aside until she found the chink in the floor by the thin, weak light that came up through it, and got the knife, the paper cone, the bits of white silk, and the silver beads out of hiding.

Then they waited, listening to the sounds of the men moving around the camp outside. Some of them were speaking a language Kira didn't know, but Meri nodded when she looked askance at her sister. Jkathan, then. So why have Jkathans kidnapped us? It was all a frustrating puzzle.

Finally there were the sounds of jingling harness and horses' hooves, and the wagon moved as at least two horses were hitched up to it. There hadn't been a driver's seat on the front of what was essentially a plain box, so Kira decided that the kidnappers must be controlling the horses with one man riding on the near-side beast. That was the way that prison-wagons were often harnessed so that the prisoners inside would not get a chance to kill the driver; it would make sense for their kidnappers to use a prison-wagon to hold them. There was no chance they would be able to break out of it, and nothing for them to use as a weapon inside. As for getting attention or help from strangers, most people avoided prison-wagons like a curse, and if anyone did hear screaming and calling from one, they'd ignore it, even if it sounded like children were doing the screaming. There were plenty of ways a child could end up in a prison-wagon, all of them perfectly good reasons to lock such a child up. Madness, for one, which would make it highly unlikely that anything they shouted would be heeded or believed.

Well, she didn't need to make any trouble for their captors in here -- she'd already made enough out there. If everyone ate at least some of the beans, in a couple of candlemarks, they'd start to feel the effects. We only ate two seeds each, and there must have been dozens, maybe hundreds, in that bag. But they were cooking all night, and that might have weakened the brew. Or would it have concentrated? I wish I knew more about these things.

Finally the wagon lurched forward and bumped onto the frozen surface of the road. Meri got the journeybread out of hiding and offered her some. They shared the waterskin between them, but drank sparingly; neither of them doubted that their captor had been telling the truth, and that there would be no stops until nightfall. Well, no planned stops.

When she'd finished her tasteless chunk of bread, she laid the patch of floor bare, and under cover of the fur, began dropping beads and bits of silk to the road below. If the seeds affected their kidnappers at the same rate she and Meri had been affected, right about noontime things would start to get interesting.

* * *

In the uncertain light of false dawn they woke and packed everything up hastily. Warrl had recovered his strength completely, and was ready to go before they were, so he took the opportunity to run down a bunny for his breakfast. They were back on the trail before true dawn.

As Tarma had bleakly expected, the trail dead-ended on the traderoad, which had thawed and re-frozen, leaving an unreadable, hard, rutted surface. There was no trace of the wagon or the horses they'd been following. Even Warrl couldn't get a scent on a surface like that.

That would have been all right, since with Need to guide them, they knew which direction to go, but they hadn't gone a league before the road split into three, all of them going south. Pick the wrong one, and their quarry would get so far ahead they'd never catch up. She sat and swore, silently, staring at the damned triple-fork, as Warrl scouted ahead on the frozen surface, hoping for a trace of scent or some other miracle to give them a clue. Then, beyond expectation, the miracle occurred. :Mindmate!: the kyree called excitedly. :Here, the middle road! I have a patch of Kira's and Meri's scent!:

Now Tarma swore happily. "Warrl has a scent!" she called to the other two, and sent her mare loping down the uneven surface as they followed the kyree. Warrl went on ahead, reporting tiny patches of scent at uneven intervals, confirming that the first patch wasn't a fluke.

"What is he picking up?" Kethry asked, wonder-ingly. "What could he possibly be picking up?"

"I don't know," Tarma began, "Maybe one of them managed to rub a hand on a wheel, but you'd think he'd have picked that up before this-"

"I think I know!" Jadrie suddenly said, and urged her horse ahead of theirs. She dangled down from the saddle in a trick Tarma had taught her and snatched something tiny off the top of a rut without pausing, then turned her horse and came back to them. "Look!" she said in triumph, holding up a tiny thread of white. It didn't look like anything.

"What in-" Tarma went cross-eyed trying to look at it.