“Ah, Gafyn,” one said, “yer a loon. Ain’t gonna happen, never will.”
Gafyn bristled. “Not to the likes of you, ya spineless bastard.”
Dez laughed. “Boy,” she said when Gafyn turned in anger, “the occupation has a dragon. Or weren’t you there?”
His eye kindled, his jaw set, hard and stubborn. “I was there.”
Weary of her anger and disappointment, Usha said, “Dez, let’s go. Give it over for today.”
Dezra shook her head, her mocking eye still on the young boaster. “And did you notice how a field full of people fell to their knees while it passed, while it did no more than disdain to look and fly on?”
The young man’s eyes narrowed. His fellows walked away, but he stood his ground. “I saw. What’s yer point?”
“My point, boy, is that Sir Radulf used that bit of theater to remind Haven that he wields more weapons than knights and ropes for hanging, and to show how little patience he has for protest.” She turned and followed Usha, but only for a few steps before she stopped. “And here’s another point for you,” she said over her shoulder. “If you can’t keep your feet when a dragon glances your way, Master Gafyn, you’re damn sure not going to take an occupation down with your own two hands.”
Usha kept walking, waiting to hear the young man’s jeers. She did not, and when she looked back, she saw Dezra leaning against a low stone wall and talking with red-headed Gafyn.
12
Heart pounding, pulse in her temples booming, Dezra pressed herself against the stony side of the jagged gulch. Dirt slithered down the neck of her shirt, and something small with too many legs scurried past her cheek. Her breathing sounded like a bellows as she bent over, hands on knees, gasping for air. Above the crashing of her heartbeat, Dez tried to hear the sounds of pursuit.
She heard it—a shout, thunder of hard-ridden horses—and Dez pressed into the shadows as four horsemen galloped by above the gulch. She saw the horses, the foam of sweat on their legs. She saw the flash of iron and mail as someone shouted, “Where’s the woman got to?”
Another voice called, “How should I know?”
The pack above slowed, horses stamping and blowing. She heard a curse in a language she didn’t know and the sound of argument. Quickly, she looked upstream, back the way she’d come. Silt clouded the water, but that would be hard to see from above.
She hoped.
Another curse, and this one in Common. “We’re wasting time. Let’s go before milady comes looking for us.”
“And then what? Go back and tell her we might have seen something of interest but didn’t find out what?”
Other voices lifted in rough opinion, and Dez’s heart thumped hard against her ribs. Milady! These were Lady Mearah’s men, dark knights from Old Keep. Behind them, on the high land above the ravine, a farmhouse burned, and the corpses of the farmer and his two sons were laid out for wolf-fodder. Ahead, Dunbrae and two refugees rode toward the ravaged farm, toward the place they expected to meet Dezra. The farm was to be a waystop where friends would feed them and keep them the night. It was to be the place where Dunbrae would hand over the refugees to Dez so she could take them the next leg of the journey on the road across the moors and through the stony Seeker Reaches.
That plan was shattered when Dez came out of the hills and saw the smoking ruin of what had once been a stubbornly thriving farm. She’d had no chance to learn what had happened, whether outlaws had fallen on the lonely farm or something else, for standing in the ruin, she’d heard the sound of harsh laughter and the ring of bridles as four knights flashed down from one of the lean, stony pastures behind the farmyard.
One had seen her, another cried the chase, and Dezra had fled onto the moor. The best she could hope for now was that everyone’s luck held and Dunbrae and his charges wouldn’t run into the horsemen.
The argument was short-lived, and the riders stormed past. After a moment, Dez heard a change in the sound of the ground-thunder. The pack of them turned away from the gulch and galloped west across the moor.
Dezra groaned a prayer of thanks. If her luck held, they’d ride a good bit before thinking about checking the gullies and ravines.
Dezra ran, splashing through the narrow brook. She eyed the rocks on each side and the slopes of the rift. Sooner or later, she’d have to find a place to clamber up one side or the other.
She stumbled, splashing to her knees. Cursing, she tried to get up and fell again as pain like fire shot through her knee.
The damn thing’s busted—!
She tried again, staggered, and knew her knee wasn’t broken. It just hurt like it was. That was little comfort as Dezra stumbled on, searching for a way up, a way out of the gulch. She no longer thought it had been outlaws who’d raided the farm and torched it. In memory, she saw the dead man again, and then thought of his wife and daughter. They might now be suffering a harder fate than their kinsmen. Dark knights were not, these days, taken from the ranks of noble families. If Lady Mearah’s knights out of Haven had done the ill work, they wouldn’t be above selling the women in the same hideous markets where outlaws did their foul trade.
Dezra stumbled again, righted herself, and went on. Her knee screamed in pain, and she grunted curses at every step.
If knights had done the work, they’d have done it because they knew the farmer and his kin had been helping people escape Haven. By all the gone gods, the name Qui’thonas might have been spoken. Her heart sank. To save a wife, a daughter’s life, the secret might have been exposed.
And it would have been exposed for nothing.
Dezra rounded a sharp bend and blessed vanished gods when she saw her way up. A small path crawled up the eastern slope of the gulch, not more than the trail a slide of rocks might have left. Dezra laughed bitterly. Right there, at the foot of the path lay the stones that had forged the way, and they’d not made a secure path, no. No matter. It was a way, and she would take it.
The blood pounded in her head. Pain marked the beat. She stopped for a moment to catch her breath. Her knee throbbed, but not with the pain of a broken bone. For that, she was grateful.
“All right, then,” she muttered. “Up, now.”
Up, and it was a hard climb, a crawl at the end, with sweat and tears the fee for gaining the top. She looked around, seeking her bearings. Haven was a smudge on the southern horizon. Around her stretched harsh gray moorland. She stilled her breathing, trying to hear, but only the cries of gulls from the river and the occasional rasp of a raven interrupted the constant moan of wind over the moor.
And then she heard it—the ring of steel on steel. A small brown haze of dust hung in the air, and Dezra knew where the fighting was.
Dez shifted the quiver on her hip and strung her bow. She hadn’t the legs for running. Her knee would betray her. And so she walked toward the dust and the shouting. Steadily, head down and determined, she marched toward the sound of a horse’s scream. Closer, she stopped and nocked an arrow to the bowstring. Two others she clamped between her teeth. Stalking on, like grim death hunting, she picked her first mark and didn’t let him out of sight. Dezra took down his horse with an arrow through the eye. She killed the fallen rider the same way.
They had been four on horseback and one of them a knight. By the time Dez killed the horse and rider, one more horse was down but not killed, and the others were shying and rearing. The knight lay dead in his armor, and Dunbrae was yanking his axe out of the man’s throat. The dwarf fought a defensive fight with his battle-axe, the deadly blade flashing around him even though the haze. One of the refugees backed him, and his was the third kill. He left Dunbrae and turned, looking for the last of the attackers.