Twenty men against the two of us? Well, I'm sure Leslac would assume it was no contest, but I'm not that sanguine. Still, if they'd camped last night, they would probably do the same tonight; they could stay out of spotting range with Warrl to scout, and creep up on the camp tonight.
"We're catching up -- which means we'd better think of something. Keth, I don't suppose you could cast some sort of magic that would put them all to sleep, could you?" she asked, a little doubtfully. After all, she'd never seen Kethry do anything of the kind -- but it was worth asking about.
Beside her, the sorceress tucked her hair under her hood as she replied, moving easily with her horse. "That only happens in childrens' tales and bad melodrama," Kethry said, then shrugged an apology. "Sorry, but that's how it is. Even if I could, it would be a sure bet that men as organized as these are would have a countering magic in effect. I see your point, it would be convenient if we could put the whole encampment to sleep and just pluck the girls out of it." She chewed her lower lip. "Let me think about it, and I'll tell you what I can do, other than call lightning down on them, or something equally spectacular and dangerous."
"Spectacular would be a bad idea," Tarma agreed, and Jadrie nodded, so she added for Jadrie's benefit, "Because-?"
"We don't know who these people are or where they're going; we don't know who is watching for them or coming to meet them. Doing something spectacular could bring down more trouble than we can deal with." Jadrie had that lesson by heart, at least. "The ideal thing would be to draw them out of the camp, one at time, and pick them off that way," Kethry mused. "But we'd have to do it quickly enough that they wouldn't notice until we'd whittled their numbers down to a manageable size."
"We'd need something to draw them out," Tarma pointed out. "As fast as they're trying to go, I doubt that they're going to stop to hunt, no matter how tempting the game looks. I just can't think of anything likely to bring them out one at a time."
"Maybe something will occur to us." Kethry dismissed all speculations, and glanced up at the overcast sky. "Maybe I can do something with the weather. Or maybe I could cast a glamour to make them think they are under attack by a large force,"
:Mindmate-: Warrl's "voice" was attenuated by distance. :I believe you had better stop now and come in carefully. They've been forced to camp.: There was savage good humor in his thoughts. :Evidently whatever made the children ill is ... contagious. Or it has been made to seem so. I'll come back and meet you halfway.:
* * *
When the effect of the seeds struck, it was fortunately quite gradual, so it didn't look like the mass poisoning it really was.
Just about noontime, the men who had eaten the most began to sicken. Although the girls couldn't make out exactly what was happening, Kira heard voices strained and distressed, then sounds she thought meant that riders were dropping back for a moment, then returning -- and each time that happened, the wagon slowed a little more. The leader was annoyed at first, then angry, but there wasn't anything he could do about it -- the men weren't in control of their stomachs anymore, their stomachs were in control of them.
Kira and Meri exchanged grins in the semidarkness of the wagon; after all, only one of the men out there had offered to help even a little when they were sick, and it seemed fitting revenge that no one wanted to help the kidnappers now.
"They probably don't even have any herbs or anything to make them feel better," Meri whispered, in ill-concealed glee.
"Probably not, or I bet they'd have drugged us to keep us quiet," Kira agreed.
Finally the wagon stopped altogether, and Kira definitely heard a rider slide off the near-side horse and make a stumbling run for the bushes. At that point, the leader roared some angry commands and when the wagon moved again, it was only a short distance.
Someone unbarred the door, but didn't open it. When Kira pushed on it tentatively, it moved, and she cautiously stuck her head out.
From the look of things, virtually every man in the group was suffering, but not all of them were hit as badly as the others. The healthiest three were guarding the wagon, looking pale and unhappy. The worst off could not be seen at all, but from the sounds of it, they were off in the bushes, throwing up everything, including their toenails. A couple, including their lone ally, had collapsed on hastily-spread blankets beside a small fire. They looked absolutely green, and Kira didn't think that a single gut-wrenching purge was going to help them get over the effects of the seeds. No, they were going to be visiting the bushes quite frequently, until every bit of the poison worked itself out of their systems.
The only man totally unaffected was the leader, probably because he had his own private stock of food, and now Kira got a good look at him. There wasn't much that was memorable about him; of average height, weight, and coloring, brown hair and brown eyes, and only his air of authority and the fine cut and fabric of his otherwise plain garments marked him as different. Even so, there was no way to tell that he wasn't what he seemed, either a prosperous merchant, or some other well-off professional, such as a sheriff or an alderman. At the moment, he scowled so furiously that Kira was very glad she wasn't under his command. He was taking the illness of his men very personally, as if they were doing it to make trouble just for him.
She looked around, making certain that she didn't attract attention to herself by moving too much, but there wasn't much that was memorable about this place. Just like the last spot, they had stopped in a cleared place at the side of the road, this time in a little depression between two hills. She had no idea where they were, and there was no sign of any habitation, not even a thin stream of smoke rising from some far-off farmhouse chimney. There were low, scrubby trees and thick bushes, a thin cover of ankle-deep snow, and not much else. The hills themselves were bare of significant cover, which would give anyone atop one a good view of the countryside. She wondered if any of the men would have the strength to climb up there to stand sentry, and privately doubted it.
If I just had some idea where to go, we might be able to get away tonight, she thought with rising hope. Maybe if we just stuck to the road, we'd be able to find an inn or a farm or something....
A hint of movement atop the hill to their rear caught Kira's eye, and she withdrew a little into the wagon so the leader of their kidnappers wouldn't see her interest. She waited to see if something appeared again. She tried to tell herself that it was only a far-off animal, perhaps a wild cow or donkey; tried not to get her hopes up too much. But she thought there had been something familiar in that half-seen shape and the way it had moved.
Would it appear again, or was it just a trick of her eyes and the hope that someone would come to save them? As she watched, holding her breath, that half-familiar silhouette did appear, just for a moment, leaping up onto the top of the hill and back down again. Her heart jumped into her throat, and when it happened a third time and she was sure of what she'd seen, she stuffed her fist into her mouth to stifle an inadvertent cry of joy that would surely have betrayed them.