Imlos? Eilir Signed.
“Sent on with the horse,” Alleyne replied. “Going to ground in one of our underground shelters and rejoining later.”
“’opefully,” John Hordle said, in his inimitable burring Hampshire-yokel version of Sindarin. “Good practice sending ’im, though, Oi think.”
Alleyne nodded. “Hopefully they’ll find the horse far away and won’t have any idea where their man was lost. They’ve been having a serious desertion problem, we know that. Some coming over, some just going home.”
There were younger Rangers who thought Alleyne’s more plummy Winchester-and-Sandhurst tones were a Quenya high-elven accent and had imitated it. Aunt Astrid had frowned on that and Uncle John had encouraged the rumor to drive her distracted…
Mary sighed a little at the memory as the Boisean was slung onto the second galley. Aunt Astrid would have loved this op like a bowl of blueberries and whipped cream. With toasted walnuts sprinkled on top.
Everyone clambered aboard with swift care; the narrow hulls rocked anyway.
“Let’s get him out of the way,” Mary said.
She was smiling at the same time; they were going home. Going home to a giant murdering battle, granted, but the principle was the same. Being isolated among the enemy just felt worse than openly confronting them, whatever the odds might be. If a hundred thousand men were going to try and kill her, at least she’d be among Montivalans when they did.
“Raich, he’s heavy!” Ritva said, as she took him by the loop of rope tied under his arms. “For a sort of cutely slim guy.”
“Or his armor is,” Mary said, as they navigated the narrow path between the rowing benches.
Mary and Ritva sank into position on either side of the prisoner in the bows. Two of the oarsmen used their shafts to push off, and then both of the boats turned their sharp prows westward. A soft chant of:
“Leidho…bado…” started as the oars swayed backward and forward.
Water hissed by outside the thin metal sheath of the hull. The prisoner’s armor was shoulder-protection and a back-and-breast of hoops and bands of plate, fastened with catches at the left shoulder and under the left arm. Ritva pushed him on his side and Mary worked the catches to release the forty pounds of steel. It went overboard with a plop as they reached deeper water; the little ship-by-courtesy was crowded enough that the room and weight-loss were welcome, even if it felt a bit wasteful.
The sky was clearing after the rain-shower; she could see more stars now, and the eastern horizon was slowly turning from dark-blue through green to a baleful and somehow ill-omened pink, though she usually liked the pre-dawn hush. The broad expanse of the Columbia revealed itself, with wisps of fog glimmering and vanishing, and the great steep brown bluffs on either bank, with black streaks where the basalt showed through. The air was chilly, on the edge of frost. Her damp clothes warmed only reluctantly, tempting her to take a spell rowing. After a few minutes the rhythmic stroke of the oars and the grunting huff of breath settled into a background music. Water purled away from the sharp bows in an endless chuckle.
Someone opened a basket and started handing out cakes made of pressed cracked and toasted grain, honey and nuts and bits of dried fruit, and cram sandwiches-flat leathery tortillas wrapped around ham and cheese. The Boisean at her feet was stirring and kicking, so they turned him upright, propped him half-sitting against the inside curve of the bow and bent to look him in the face with theirs side-by-side and filling his field of view.
“You promise to be sensible?” Ritva asked. “No tussling on the boat?”
“So we don’t have to stab you or hack off your head,” Mary added.
“Or cut your throat or drown you,” Ritva finished cheerfully.
“Which would be sort of silly after all the trouble we took to get you here alive,” Mary pointed out. “Which we really didn’t have to do.”
“It was just our inherent Folk-of-the-West niceness.”
“So give us your parole until we reach our dock.”
“It isn’t far,” Ritva clarified.
The prisoner’s eyes flicked from one of them to the other, as blue as their own; his brown hair was short on the top and tight at the sides. They’d shed their war-cloaks and steel caps, and the identical blond fighting-braids lay on their shoulders as they beamed at him. Ian leaned around Ritva to add with a slightly alarming smile:
“And they really mean it, you know.”
The prisoner nodded, and the twins reached to untie his hands and remove the gag.
“Let’s hear your parole,” Mary said.
“I won’t try to escape or attack you until I’m taken off this boat,” the man said, his voice rough from the near-throttling. “Or it sinks. On my honor as an officer.”
“That’ll do,” Mary said. “But we’ll get really cranky if you don’t keep it.”
“Even a bit mean and bitchy,” Ritva said, pointing a warning finger at his face.
“And they really mean that,” Ian said. “Have a sandwich.”
Mary grinned to herself as he glanced from one to the other, startled by the unison of their movements. It had been even more effective in the old days.
Uh-oh, she thought when he frowned. He’s recognizing us.
The problem with heroic deeds like the Sword Quest that brought undying fame was that it made you…
Sort of famous. Which can be awkward when people just recognize you out of the blue. Sometimes they think they know you just because they’ve heard the stories, too.
His face changed: “Christ. You’re Ritva and Mary Havel, aren’t you? The woo-” He visibly reconsidered something that was probably on the order of woot-woot. “The Dunydain? That King Artos guy’s sisters?”
“Yup. Though that’s Mary Vogeler now that I’m married and respectable. Sort of.”
“And we’re the High King’s half sisters; same father, different mothers,” Ritva said.
“Very different,” Mary clarified.
The Boisean was a young man but older than they were, with a lean weathered face. Ian’s hand snaked in with a canteen, and as he drank cautiously-chloroform didn’t make you feel all that good when it wore off, and being throttled didn’t either-the shape of his cheekbones tugged at Mary’s memory…
“You wouldn’t be named Woburn, would you?” she said. “Of the Camas Prairie Woburns? Head of the family is a Rancher and Sheriff there, a big landholder near Grangeville?”
The man nodded. “That would be my father. I’m Centurion Dave Woburn.”
She shot a covert glance at her sister; it wouldn’t do for her to mention the visit Ritva and the Rangers had paid to Sheriff Woburn’s ranch on their way to the rescue mission in Boise. The elder Woburn was willing to give actual help to Martin Thurston’s opponents; as far as they knew his oldest son was just dissatisfied. Ritva gave her an annoyed do-you-think-I’m-stupid glare in return.
“I met your brother!” Mary said instead to the prisoner.
That had been far east of here, in Barony Tucannon, in one of the opening skirmishes of the campaign. The enemy alliance of Boise and the CUT occupied that area now…except for the walled cities and castles, which they didn’t have the time or resources to take, and the guerillas who were making their life less than joyful every hour of the night and most of the days. She’d heard someone describe it as the flies conquering the flypaper.
“My brother Jack?” the man said, suddenly eager. “But he was taken prisoner-”
“A couple of months ago. My husband and I were in that fight,” she said happily. “We had lunch with your brother afterwards at the Baron of Tucannon’s manor house at Grimmond-on-the-Wold. Lovely place, I hope you guys didn’t burn it. He’s OK, and the left arm healed well, I heard. In fact, he’s working for Fred now. You know, Frederick Thurston. The one of your ruler’s sons who didn’t kill his father.”