I looked up and to the right. The road we'd taken was partially visible, a darker vein hanging tenaciously from the mountainside. Stood out on that vein, some distance behind, a file of miniscule black forms stole towards us. I couldn't make out details. I didn't need to. I was about to cry out when some urge made me look back down the other leg of the highway, towards Muena Palaiya. The shout strangled off in my throat. A matching procession was creeping along the road that threaded down to meet our own.
Estrada picked that moment to clamber up beside me. She looked at me bemusedly — the cart had ground almost to a standstill — and followed my line of sight.
"They've found us!"
The way those three words galvanised her tiny army was something to behold. It was hard to believe they were the same men who'd been singing, joking and tripping over each other's feet a few minutes before. The fish-merchants seemed even more alarmed by the transformation, as the rabble around them struck up a marching pace, as riders and carters stopped to scoop up those slowed down by injuries.
The cloud-piled sky chose that moment to shatter, with a cruel gash of lightning and a rumble that shook the earth beneath our feet. A liquid wall fell with the abruptness of a stage curtain. Immediately, the world was reduced to nothing but the road scudding by beneath us and rain so drenching that we might have been standing in a river.
Estrada lashed our horses, and they surged into motion. It was impossible to see ahead. Moaradrid's two approaching forces were utterly veiled from view, as was the tail of our own column. Though it was nowhere near evening it seemed like the most starless night, except when lightning lit the world blue-white.
When the thunder was silent, all I could hear was the rattle of the cart, the horses, and Saltlick pounding the road beside us. Though we couldn't have been travelling that quickly, I was convinced we'd hurtle over the edge at any moment. I gripped my seat and stared into the blackness, flinching at every slight turn and every flash or rumble.
It seemed miraculous that we reached the valley floor in one piece. It was stranger still to look back and see our party congealing out of the rain behind us, a battalion of sodden ghosts. Everyone had made it in one piece, as far as I could tell. It wasn't long before they'd surrounded us on every side, blocking the crossroads that joined the mountain road with Muena Palaiya and the rest of the Castoval. Mounteban loomed beside us, shaking water from his beard with fierce jerks of the head.
"Moaradrid's brigands are close," he roared.
"I know. It's now or never."
"They're not ready. It won't work."
"We have no choice."
Mounteban just nodded.
Estrada stood on the driver's board, rain-lashed, silhouetted against the pitchy sky. At the top of her lungs she called, "If we wait, they'll take us. So we separate. You have your instructions. We'll meet again four days hence at the designated place — or the Castoval is lost. Every man is on his own now. Good luck!"
The cheer that met her words seemed oddly wild amidst the storm. The crowd fell apart immediately, as though cleaved by some outside force. Estrada dropped back into her seat and drove the horses forward. Mounteban, his riders, and the greater part of the throng fell in around us.
Distant, hardly distinguishable from the drumming rain, I heard the pound of hooves.
Moaradrid's forces were closing — and here we were, as helpless as we'd ever been.
CHAPTER 11
Had there been anyone on that storm-lashed road to see us go by, we'd have made a strange and alarming spectacle.
First would have thundered past a convoy of riders and overloaded carts, all travelling far too fast for the drenched road, gear rattling, maybe a loosened barrel tumbling free. If lightning had chanced to flicker, they'd have seen the strain stamped on every face. They'd surely have gaped at the monster near the rear, struggling to keep pace, oblivious to the rain exploding from its back and head.
Then the last rider would have hurtled by. The noise — of clattering wheels, hooves, straining wood — would have faded.
Soon after, no more than a minute, the other horsemen would have appeared; looming out of the tempest, no attempt made to disguise weapons slung on backs and drumming against thighs. They'd have been travelling perilously fast too, and urging their mounts to even greater efforts — though without success. They'd have passed more quickly, like a moon-shadow. Not one would have so much as looked aside.
Moaradrid's men had been riding hard all day, and their horses were far from fresh. They simply weren't fast enough to overtake us. If they'd been closer at the start then it would have gone differently. But we'd lost more than half our following over the first two hours, as men peeled away at every junction, the wounded and old limping off towards farmhouses and hamlets. By the time they'd closed the gap, there was no one left on foot, and we were moving as fast as they were. All they could hope for was to wear us down.
And that was how it went for the longest time. They came closer, we pulled away, on and on through the dark and cold and endless rain.
Mounteban claimed that the force from Muena Palaiya had come after us and the rest had followed those who'd fled southward. No one apart from him found it important. In fact, Estrada would barely speak to him. Straight after the separation at the crossroads, they'd loudly fallen out. She'd asked why he was with us and not the other party as planned, and he'd grunted some excuse about choosing the wrong direction in the rain.
"Don't lie to me."
"Fine. I came to protect you."
"What makes you think I need protecting?"
"The fact that if you die, everything's lost."
"And them? What about them?"
That was the last she said to him, except for the occasional terse command. If not for that, even the decision to flee might have been open to question. Mounteban told her — soon after their argument, and possibly just to draw her out — that our pursuers were only a scouting party, no more than thirty men. If he was right, it meant we'd just about outnumber them in a fight.
"Of course most of our archers went the other way, so they'd have us there… but an ambush, perhaps…"
"We keep running," Estrada replied. And that was the end of that.
Those were the last words anyone spoke for hours. There was nothing to discuss. There was only the chase: its muted sounds, glimpses of shadowed forms behind us, and the ceaseless, hammering fear. They were gaining or we were, and each man could judge only for himself with a hundred half-snatched glances. With least to do, I kept a lookout more than anyone. I strained until my neck ached and my eyes burned. I couldn't see horses or men behind, only a single dark blot. I watched it grow larger, grow smaller — there was nothing else in the world.
Then suddenly it was gone. I didn't believe it. It seemed far more likely that the fault was with my vision. I strained until tiny lights seemed to pop and dance in the blackness. Still there was nothing, only empty road trailing into the rain-soaked night.
Someone called, "They've given up."
I kept staring. It was a trick, a trap. At any moment, that blot would reappear, maybe far closer.
Then we struck an incline that brought us higher than the road behind. At the same time, a little blurred moonlight fell in ribbons through the clouds. There they were. They'd fallen far behind; there could be no doubt of it.
Mounteban sent one of his bodyguards to investigate. He was a small, intensely quiet man that I'd barely noticed until then. There was something about him that made me want to avert my gaze — and now that I couldn't help but look, a quality to his movements that made the hairs on my neck stand up. He soon returned, and whispered to Mounteban, who related that their tracks made an about-turn and disappeared the way we'd come.