Mercedes Lackey - Oathblood

Jadrie grinned. "It's the white silk embroidery thread I gave Meri for Midwinter. Remember, you've trained Kira, and she knows she has to leave us something to follow. I bet they're cutting it up and dropping it out of the wagon."

"I bet you're right." She turned her attention to the kyree and thought at him. Warrl, if you lose the trail, check to either side of the road. You're following bits of silk, and they might blow off the road itself.

:Clever girls!: was his comment, and with that sure guide, they were able to increase their pace to the ground-eating lope that best suited the kyree, even when the road branched, and branched again.

By midmorning, they came upon the kidnappers' camp, with the scent of the girls all around it. The ashes of the fire were cold, but Tarma knew the kidnappers couldn't have increased their lead by much, if anything. Warrl reported that the girls had been sick, which didn't surprise Tarma at all, and didn't worry her too much. That was a natural reaction to what had happened to them, and it was encouraging to know that Warrl reported no signs that the children had been mistreated in any way -- no blood, no torn-out hair, the scent of fear but only what he would have expected. He would be able to scent a drop of blood too small to see; even bruised flesh would leave a "different" odor to his keen senses. And as for other kinds of abuse -- well, those would have left clear scents as well, and Warrl found nothing of the sort.

They didn't spend too much time at the campsite; there wasn't much it could tell them that they didn't already know. The snow was too trampled to tell how many men they were facing, though Warrl's guess was around twenty. There was one place where a small tent had clearly been set up, and that meant these kidnappers had a leader, someone who considered himself too superior to the others to sleep beside the fire with the rest of them. There was no scent of the girls at that spot, and it wasn't likely they'd be allowed out of their prison, especially at night, so the tent had to belong to the leader.

They set off in much less than a candlemark, and when the road forked again, Warrl ranged up both forks until he found another bit of silk, giving them the right direction. But it wasn't until they came across a horse-dropping that was still faintly warm that Tarma knew for certain that they would be able to catch up to the kidnappers.

Twenty men against the two of us? Well, I'm sure Leslac would assume it was no contest, but I'm not that sanguine. Still, if they'd camped last night, they would probably do the same tonight; they could stay out of spotting range with Warrl to scout, and creep up on the camp tonight.

"We're catching up -- which means we'd better think of something. Keth, I don't suppose you could cast some sort of magic that would put them all to sleep, could you?" she asked, a little doubtfully. After all, she'd never seen Kethry do anything of the kind -- but it was worth asking about.

Beside her, the sorceress tucked her hair under her hood as she replied, moving easily with her horse. "That only happens in childrens' tales and bad melodrama," Kethry said, then shrugged an apology. "Sorry, but that's how it is. Even if I could, it would be a sure bet that men as organized as these are would have a countering magic in effect. I see your point, it would be convenient if we could put the whole encampment to sleep and just pluck the girls out of it." She chewed her lower lip. "Let me think about it, and I'll tell you what I can do, other than call lightning down on them, or something equally spectacular and dangerous."

"Spectacular would be a bad idea," Tarma agreed, and Jadrie nodded, so she added for Jadrie's benefit, "Because-?"

"We don't know who these people are or where they're going; we don't know who is watching for them or coming to meet them. Doing something spectacular could bring down more trouble than we can deal with." Jadrie had that lesson by heart, at least. "The ideal thing would be to draw them out of the camp, one at time, and pick them off that way," Kethry mused. "But we'd have to do it quickly enough that they wouldn't notice until we'd whittled their numbers down to a manageable size."

"We'd need something to draw them out," Tarma pointed out. "As fast as they're trying to go, I doubt that they're going to stop to hunt, no matter how tempting the game looks. I just can't think of anything likely to bring them out one at a time."

"Maybe something will occur to us." Kethry dismissed all speculations, and glanced up at the overcast sky. "Maybe I can do something with the weather. Or maybe I could cast a glamour to make them think they are under attack by a large force,"

:Mindmate-: Warrl's "voice" was attenuated by distance. :I believe you had better stop now and come in carefully. They've been forced to camp.: There was savage good humor in his thoughts. :Evidently whatever made the children ill is ... contagious. Or it has been made to seem so. I'll come back and meet you halfway.:

* * *

When the effect of the seeds struck, it was fortunately quite gradual, so it didn't look like the mass poisoning it really was.

Just about noontime, the men who had eaten the most began to sicken. Although the girls couldn't make out exactly what was happening, Kira heard voices strained and distressed, then sounds she thought meant that riders were dropping back for a moment, then returning -- and each time that happened, the wagon slowed a little more. The leader was annoyed at first, then angry, but there wasn't anything he could do about it -- the men weren't in control of their stomachs anymore, their stomachs were in control of them.

Kira and Meri exchanged grins in the semidarkness of the wagon; after all, only one of the men out there had offered to help even a little when they were sick, and it seemed fitting revenge that no one wanted to help the kidnappers now.

"They probably don't even have any herbs or anything to make them feel better," Meri whispered, in ill-concealed glee.

"Probably not, or I bet they'd have drugged us to keep us quiet," Kira agreed.

Finally the wagon stopped altogether, and Kira definitely heard a rider slide off the near-side horse and make a stumbling run for the bushes. At that point, the leader roared some angry commands and when the wagon moved again, it was only a short distance.

Someone unbarred the door, but didn't open it. When Kira pushed on it tentatively, it moved, and she cautiously stuck her head out.

From the look of things, virtually every man in the group was suffering, but not all of them were hit as badly as the others. The healthiest three were guarding the wagon, looking pale and unhappy. The worst off could not be seen at all, but from the sounds of it, they were off in the bushes, throwing up everything, including their toenails. A couple, including their lone ally, had collapsed on hastily-spread blankets beside a small fire. They looked absolutely green, and Kira didn't think that a single gut-wrenching purge was going to help them get over the effects of the seeds. No, they were going to be visiting the bushes quite frequently, until every bit of the poison worked itself out of their systems.

The only man totally unaffected was the leader, probably because he had his own private stock of food, and now Kira got a good look at him. There wasn't much that was memorable about him; of average height, weight, and coloring, brown hair and brown eyes, and only his air of authority and the fine cut and fabric of his otherwise plain garments marked him as different. Even so, there was no way to tell that he wasn't what he seemed, either a prosperous merchant, or some other well-off professional, such as a sheriff or an alderman. At the moment, he scowled so furiously that Kira was very glad she wasn't under his command. He was taking the illness of his men very personally, as if they were doing it to make trouble just for him.