Jame ran slantwise toward the paddocks, through the orchard, over the broken wall, across the training field. The wind whipped grass around her legs and blew cold down her back. Behind, trees began to swoop and toss, sending cascades of leaves after her. With the coming storm, the odds were that no one in the college would hear what was going on outside.
Thunder grumbled. Lightning flared, stroke and delayed crack as the first chill drops of rain fell. Jorin, running at her side, made an unhappy sound.
The gelding herd was galloping from fence to fence, out of control, careening. Perhaps a dozen were down. Leaving an anxious Jorin behind, Jame slipped between the fence bars, waited her chance, and ran to one of the fallen. It looked huge on the ground, with sweat darkening its shoulders. When she touched it, it squealed and tried to lurch to its feet, but couldn’t. Jame had leaped back, heart pounding. Horses were so big and powerful, so unpredictable . . . then she could see that the gelding’s hind hocks had been hamstrung. Who would do such a cruel thing, and why?
The next paddock contained the mares. They surged against the northern end of their enclosure, agitated but somewhat in check if only because they were so close-packed. The wooden fence groaned under the press of their bodies.
Jame slipped into the aisle between the fields and skirted the mares’ paddock along its western side. As soon as she was clear of the packed herd, she saw a pale mound on the ground. Oh no. Not Bel-tairi. The Whinno-hir raised her head and whickered at the mares, calming them somewhat. Then she was forced back down. Someone in black knelt on her neck and held bright steel to her throat. Other dark-clad figures formed a line holding back the mares, preparing to drive them out.
But they—whoever they were—had run into a hitch.
Jame was so intent on Bel that for a moment she didn’t realize that the rathorn was also there. He stood at the southern end of the field like some fabulous statue, ivory-sheathed head held high with its scythe horns, white back and flanks almost luminous in the deepening gloom. From crest to tail, his hackles were up. He too was surrounded, with ropes radiating out from around his neck like spokes. He raised one hoof and brought it down—crack!—to another whiplash of lightning. The man bending over the Whinno-hir pressed his knife to her neck, and the rathorn again froze.
Jame could feel his rage, impatience, and fear. He had been waiting for her to come, and now she was here.
Do something!
The words might as well have been shouted.
Those not holding a rope were fitting arrows to their bows. The rathorn’s armor protected most of his vital organs, barring a lucky shaft to the eye, but he was about to become a very unhappy pincushion. If they did succeed in killing him, they would probably drag his carcass away for the wealth of ivory on it, but not if she could help it.
Jame’s own fury at Bel’s plight half choked her. The last time the Whinno-hir had been trapped like this, Greshan, Jame’s own dear uncle, had pressed a branding iron to her face, half blinding and maiming her. Not again. Never again. Jame drew her knife, slipped into the field, and ran at a crouch toward Bel’s captor. The man heard her coming at the last minute.
A Merikit? she thought as she glimpsed his startled, heavily tattooed face. How could that be? Not only were Chingetai and his people tied up with their ruined rites, but this didn’t seem like them at all. Theft, maybe; not mutilation. But it made no difference. The stranger held a knife at Bel’s throat. Her own blade slid past his and across his neck, stilling any outcry in a great gout of blood.
His mates hadn’t noticed his silent fall.
Hastily checking Bel, Jame saw with relief that she was only bound, not cut, and freed her.
“Stay down a moment,” she whispered, and took off at a run toward the rathorn.
He saw her coming, reared, and screamed. In that sound, and the smell rolling off of him, was sheer terror for all who heard except Jame, who was protected by the bond between them. Bel leaped to her feet and shrilled at the mares. The herd surged backward, crashed through the fence, and fled. Most of their would-be captors ran after them, while a few turned back to help their mates. There must be a good twenty of them still in the paddock.
Jame swung up onto the rathorn’s back without giving herself a chance to think. His hackles made for an uncomfortable seat, but she clung with her knees and one hand twisted in the feathery tips of his mane. The other wielding the knife slashed at those ropes that still held him captive. Some of the raiders had dropped their weapons and fled, but others hung on grimly or drew their bows. Arrows hissed past or rebounded from the rathorn’s ivory armor. One creased Jame’s leg, drawing a line of pain, and the rathorn screamed again. His rage licked like fire at the edges of Jame’s already frayed self-control.
As for controlling him, huh. She simply hung on. While she had, briefly, ridden the colt before, he had mainly focused on trying to dislodge her without seeming to. It had been a game for him, a way to get back at her for accidentally blood-binding him. This was different. She felt linked to his movements, sensing them a moment before he made them and shifting her balance accordingly. The night reeled about her, terrifying, exhilarating.
Horns, hooves, and teeth—Trinity, what a nightmare. The rathorn jerked a raider to him, speared him under the ribs with his nasal tusk, and threw him, shrieking, at his companions. Another crumpled under the scimitar blow of his major horn. A third died screaming under his hooves. A fourth’s head he caught in his jaws and lifted the man off the ground to shake him until Jame heard the dull crunch of his neck breaking. The next moment, his body tumbled free.
Sweet Trinity, Jame thought, sickened. He’s bitten that man’s head off.
But this last almost proved the rathorn’s downfall. He retreated, madly shaking his skull mask, then reared and went over backward.
Jame was thrown clear. For a moment she lay half-dazed with the impact, then scrambled up. The colt was still on his back, legs thrashing in a vain attempt to hook a dew-claw in his mouth. He was also choking. The head must be wedged in his jaws, Jame thought, probably snagged through the eye sockets on his fangs. Oh, ugh.
On her knees, she captured his skull mask and stilled him with a fierce thought. His breath certainly was hissing around something. To her relief, she saw not mangled flesh and gristle stuck in that gaping maw but the remains of a leather helmet. True, though, it had caught on his teeth and was halfway to strangling him. She freed it with her claws. As he surged to his feet, Jame rose astride him, but nearly fell off when he paused to give himself a vigorous shake.
“We have got to do some serious training,” she told him. “Be damned if I’m going to pick your teeth again.”
Chill rain spat in her face, as cold as the day had been hot. Storm clouds boiled down the river valley from the north, laced with lightning bolts flung back and forth on high. Flashes of sudden, brutal light showed the mares circling in time to their own thunder on the training field, Bel palely glimmering among them. A group of the raiders were trying to herd them toward the forest. Closer at hand, their fellows had stopped to form a rear guard. One man seemed to be rallying them. A lightning flash limned his face and the scar twisting his upper lip. Then the dark rushed in again, concealing all.
Jame felt the rathorn gather himself and so wasn’t left sitting in midair when he hurtled onto the field. Great muscles flexed between her knees, gather and release, gather and release, and his breath roared. The ground rushed past. She tried to remember if there were any sudden dips or rises or rocks on which the colt might trip—the thought of being flung like a shot from a sling didn’t appeal to her—but he seemed to know where to put his hooves; and, after all, there were four of them, the better to maintain balance.