Барб Хенди - Of Truth and Beasts

“Oh, seven hells!” Wynn said breathily.

More shouts and scuffling hooves built as Chane ripped away the canvas. He vaulted the wagon’s side, nearly landing atop Wynn. She was curled on the ground, holding her shoulder, and he jerked out both swords.

Three elven riders blocked the wagon’s path. An arrow was stuck in the wagon’s bench. Shade snarled and snapped at the trio.

This was all Chane needed to know.

“No ... ah no!” Wynn whispered.

He did not look down, and rasped out one word: “Shade!”

Chane vaulted over Wynn as Shade leaped, her paws touching twice along a thick, protruding lance.

The instant Chane jumped over Wynn, she scrambled up the wagon’s side, but Shade had already charged, as well. The dog bounded off the lance and rammed headlong into the patrol’s leader. Both tumbled off the flanks of the panicked, rearing horse. Then Ore-Locks rolled out of the wagon’s back, bleary-eyed.

“All of you! Stop this!” Wynn shouted. “ Èan bârtva’na !”

The first lunging rider swept his lance across the bench and at her head.

Wynn ducked, and then someone grabbed the back of her cloak. She spun as she was slung around and barely caught herself on the wagon’s rear wheel.

“Get back, and stay there!” Ore-Locks ordered.

A rider wheeled his mount around the wagon.

“Behind you!” Wynn shouted.

Ore-Locks twisted back as the lance’s blunt tip came straight at his head. He slapped it aside, but the rider’s horse barreled straight into him. Wynn’s mouth gaped, and she lurched off the wagon’s wheel, reflexively trying to reach for him. But Ore-Locks didn’t go down.

The hulkish dwarf’s heavy boots skidded across the packed earth and stones under the horse’s momentum. Then they caught, and he rooted.

Ore-Locks’s thick arms wrapped around the horse’s shoulders, and he grabbed the saddle’s girth on both sides. The rider dropped his lance and reached over his shoulder for his sword’s hilt. Before Wynn shouted another warning, Ore-Locks heaved.

The rider went slack-mouthed as his mount’s front hooves left the ground.

Ore-Locks let out a guttural growl through clenched teeth. He wrenched sideways on the saddle’s girth. Rider and horse began to topple, and then both tumbled off the road in a crackle of branches and brush.

“Stay down, you yiannû-billê !” Ore-Locks shouted as his opponent thrashed in the tangle.

A clang of steel jerked Wynn’s attention ahead. The third rider had dismounted, sword in hand, and was trying to drive Chane out of the plain’s grass and toward the wagon. He was holding Chane at bay, at least, and Shade ...

Wynn ran past Ore-Locks before he could grab her.

Shade had forced the patrol leader along the road into the plain. The man held out his sword, still sheathed, fending her off. Wynn saw only one way to end this quickly.

“Chane, no blood!” she shouted.

He ignored her and sidestepped, trying to get around to his opponent. The elven patroller shifted the other way, never taking his eyes off Chane, but he stalled at the sight of Wynn and exposed his side. It was a terrible mistake, and the only thing Wynn could hope for in a panicked moment.

Wynn ran headlong, ducking at the last instant as the patroller raised his sword.

“Wynn!” Chane rasped.

Wynn’s small shoulder rammed into the elf’s side. She tumbled more than rolled through the tall grass, and she kept tumbling blindly to get out of reach. When she regained her feet, her shoulder ached even more, and she wavered a little.

The elf rose out of the grass with his long, delicately curved sword in hand.

“Back off, Chane,” Wynn called, and turned to face his opponent. “No blood! Na-fuil! ”

The elf hesitated. Before he changed his mind, she spun and ran for Shade.

The leader stood three paces off, shifting at each of Shade’s snapping lunges as she tried to find an opening. He gave her none and held his ground, though his sword was now out of its sheath.

Apparently, any tradition against spilling blood went only so far here when they thought a human had taken a majay-hì. But the leader held his blade at guard rather than readied to strike.

The patrollers appeared to think Wynn had stolen a sacred majay-hì from their forest. But if they’d stopped to think about the obvious, she might have had a moment to explain. She was entering, rather than leaving, their lands.

“Shade, stop it!” Wynn shouted, resisting the urge to grab the dog, and she looked to the leader. “I’m no despoiler— na-re-upâr ! I didn’t steal the majay-hì. She came for me ... â a’cheâva riam —”

“I understand you, woman,” the leader returned in clear Numanese.

Shade broke off her attack, circling back and rounding closely against Wynn’s legs. The leader stared at her for a few seconds, and then raised his voice.

“Na-bârt—a’greim äiche túâg! ”

Wynn glanced back as he ordered his men to hold their positions.

There was Chane right behind her, his back to hers. He had his shorter blade in his left hand, point down, with the dwarven sword at the ready in the other. His opponent stood beyond sword’s reach, looking to his superior.

Back near the wagon, Ore-Locks stood in the brush, staring down, with one large fist clenched. Wynn could only assume he had the third patroller pinned under his foot.

This was a mess, and one she should’ve foreseen. She’d seen how the an’Cróan had first reacted to Chap traveling among humans. Here, by what little she knew, majay-hì didn’t mingle among the Lhoin’na as they did among the an’Cróan, let alone outside their lands.

Wynn reached back to touch Chane’s elbow. “It’s all right. I can ...”

Her voice failed when she felt the shudder in his arm, and he did not stop shaking at her touch.

“Chane?”

She glanced back again, and then lifted her gaze briefly.

In the west behind her, the sun had barely dropped into the treetops beyond the wagon. Chane’s outer protection obviously wasn’t enough for him to last much longer.

Wynn turned and grabbed his arm.

“Get in the wagon, quick,” she whispered in Belaskian, so no one else would understand. “I can handle this, and—”

“No!” he rasped, though it came out grating under strain.

“Don’t be an idiot.” She jerked on his arm, though she couldn’t pull it down. “Shade and Ore-Locks are here. Just do it, before this gets any worse and someone gets suspicious.”

He stood there until she pulled on his arm again.

Chane half turned, lowering his head, but all Wynn saw was a featureless leather mask and dark, round lenses. He finally pulled away, slowly and widely sidestepping around his opponent.

Wynn turned back to the leader, not knowing how to explain Chane’s disturbing appearance, so she didn’t try.

“Look at me,” she said, brushing a hand down her short robe. “I am a sage , come from Calm Seatt to deliver an official communication from my Premin Council to that of your branch. So either please escort me to the city ... or get out of my way.”

Shade stepped forward, growling at the patrol leader. He didn’t even flinch, but as he looked at her, his brow wrinkled in confusion. A majay-hì, far from where it should be, was ready to turn on him for the sake of a human.

This was the last way Wynn could’ve ever wished to enter Lhoin’na lands for the first time.

Chane lay alone beneath the canvas in the wagon’s back, listening. He heard the clop of horses to the left and the right, and he knew the patrol was still present as the wagon rolled along. But he could also hear his companions.