Kate Elliott - Traitors Gate

'Greetings of the day. I'm Tomen.'

'I'm called Shai.'

'Shayi?'

'Shai.'

Laukas shrugged. 'These outlanders have cursed strange names.'

Ketti murmured the name a couple of times, trying to get the vowels right.

'Who was willing to take the risk of smuggling you out?' Tomen asked. 'You'll understand we have to be suspicious of anyone we don't know.'

Shai considered his options.

With a tight smile, Tomen went on. 'While you're thinking up a likely story, try making it an entertaining one.'

They trudged in silence but for the weight of feet and hooves on the trail. It was cool under the leaves; with only a vest and trousers, Shai found himself suppressing a shiver. Mud coated his bare feet. His toes were cold.

'I am a scout,' he said finally. 'But not for the army. I am spying on them. I was pretending to be a slave. Then the call came

that all outlanders must be interrogated by the cloaks. So I had to get away.'

'Not a very colorful account,' observed Tomen.

'No fights, no devouring, no wine,' agreed Laukas.

'I've heard my little sister make up better tales,' added Ketti.

'Who are you spying for?' Tomen continued. 'How did you contact the smugglers? Why did they agree to help you? You can see these are questions we'll need answers for.'

'If you're captured, anything I tell you can be taken from you.' He coughed the last bit of dust out of his throat. 'By the Guardians who command the army.'

'I've heard it said the commanders of the army wear cloaks and call themselves Guardians. But Laukas here could wear a cloak and call himself a Guardian.'

'Still wouldn't help him get women to sleep with him,' added Ketti. 'Him with that… problem… he has.'

'You wish you had my problem,' said Laukas with a laugh, slapping Ketti on the ass. 'They're all afraid of me because I have such a masterful tool.'

'Call them demons, then,' said Shai, over the banter. 'They look into your heart and eat'your memories.'

That made them frown. Tomen strode ahead to talk to his sister and the young envoy. They walked along casually enough, but Ketti looked over his shoulder whenever the men walking as rearguard fell out of sight behind a bend. Some of the group carried regular weapons, spears with iron points, short swords, but the rest made do with hunting bows, scythes, axes, or stout walking staffs with one end sharpened to a point. He might outrun them, Shai thought, but then he'd be lost, weaponless, and without food or shelter. They hadn't killed him yet. He still had a chance to enlist their help.

Through the afternoon they stopped twice to water the mules and drink from leather bottles filled with a sour-sharp juice that made Shai's mouth pucker as Laukas and Ketti laughed.

Late in the day Tomen dropped back with his sister, who had a roving eye that took in Shai's form from toe to head, lingering on his hips and chest in a way that made him blush.

'It could be true,' she said. 'He could be a scout come to spy on the army. I never saw any outlanders marching with the cursed occupiers. Still, there's a tale in the street that a second army was sent to Olo'osson but got whipped and its remnants

sent crawling home. That might be a story people tell to themselves to gather hope where there is none, or it might be true. What do you say, Shayi?'

'Let us say I tell you who I am and where I come from. Let us say you are captured. Then if they take you in front of one of the cloaks, all the things I tell you, the cloaks will come to know. Better I keep silence.'

'Can these cloaks eat our hearts?' Tomen asked his sister.

'Folk are terrified of them, that's certain. I never faced one. Let's see what the honored ones say.'

They camped that night on the edge of open ground, sleeping among the bushes with guards set over Shai. At dawn, two strangers were led blindfolded into the encampment. Coin changed hands, and the two men led away the mules, the carpets, and certain of the heavier encumbrances, while the remaining baggage was distributed among the group.

'I can take more,' Shai said, after they'd burdened him with bolts of cloth lashed together, an awkward bundle whose weight drove down his back.

'Wsst! Look at him, showing off,' said Laukas.

Ketti snorted.

'Quiet,' said Tomen.

All morning they slunk along the verge of cleared fields, neat orchards, a small lake with shores grown heavy with rushes and several wooden piers built out into the shallows, a cluster of villages ringed by carefully husbanded woodlots. About midday, they crept through the abandoned ruins of an old waterwheel housing half-collapsed over a stream. A spur of woodland had grown into decaying outbuildings that had been left to rot long years ago. Moving away from the stream's splashing chatter, they picked their way through underbrush toward a massive tree of a kind Shai did not recognize. Below branches thick as roof beams, a path had been cleared, hard to see unless you were right on it but well maintained along its twisting length. Now they picked up the pace, stopping twice to take swigs of the juice which was only growing more sour as time passed. After a while they left the path and splashed down a stream until Shai thought his feet would freeze.

'You're tough, I'll give you that,' Laukas said when they climbed onto a sliver of trail. 'Not one word of complaint.'

Birds whistled in the canopy as they followed the trail

through branches and dragging vines as likely to slap you in the face as part gracefully at your passing. When twigs snapped or leaves rustled, he could not see what had made the noise. His bundle got caught several times in vines or limbs, forcing him to wait for someone to chop him free. It was as if the forest were clutching at him.

At last he stumbled into a clearing overtopped by trees whose canopies spread like roofs. A fire burned in a brick hearth, two big blackened pots hanging over coals and meat sizzling on a spit. Hammocks swung from the lower branches of trees, while canvas roofs were slung higher up where huge limbs branched and boards had been hammered between to make platforms.

He had expected a larger group, but once he sorted out the faces he already knew from the unfamiliar ones, he counted only thirty-seven fighters. They greeted each other with jostling, hugging, and kissing while he stood in their midst with all that weight on his shoulders, forgotten except for Laukas with an eyebrow cocked toward him. Ketti had his arms full with a tall lass.

She looked over his shoulder at Shai. 'What's this? A new mule?'

'Ouch,' remarked Laukas to Shai. 'You must admit I've been hells more polite to you, eh? That's Geda. Tongue like a dagger.'

'What else it's good for you'll never know,' she retorted, releasing Ketti and circling Shai with the same hungry look Tomen's sister had used, the one that made color rise to his cheeks. Women in Kartu Town never looked at men like that. 'Well built, I must say.'

'Heya!' said Ketti. 'You're my girl.'

'I'm not your girl. I'm just sleeping with you.' She dismissed all three men with a shrug and walked over to greet Tomen and his sister.

Laukas helped Shai out of the straps. 'Poor Ketti. Oof! That's heavier than I thought.'

An elderly woman took charge of the goods with the measuring gaze of an experienced merchant. In the clearing, logs made benches, and folk settled with pleasure to take a meal. Someone with plenty of time on her hands had carved trenchers enough for every two or three to share, using carved spoons to scoop nai porridge and sticks to pluck scraps of meat sliced from the haunch. To Shai's surprise, there was plenty. He ate until he was

full, and they begrudged him none of it even as Laukas kept a seat to one side and Ketti to the other. Talk poured like rain; Shai, exhausted, had trouble following it. There fell laughter and songs, and afterward as he nodded in and out of a sitting doze, men pulled out a table and set it on flat ground. The arm-wrestling began, first among the women — Geda won this tournament — and afterward the men took turns in a complicated system he was too tired to sort out.