The higher Ellonlef went, the steeper and harder the ascent became. In the stillness of the night, she paused on the rough curve of a boulder, biting her bottom lip to stifle a whimper of agony. Her knee, along with gods knew how many other scrapes and bruises, pulsed with her heartbeat. But the knee was by far the worst. Without the ability to move easily, her chance of seeing another dawn as a free woman grew slim indeed.
She ran cautious fingers over the bulge under her dusty robes and hastily pulled back. Breathing hard, she continued to search out other, less grievous wounds. There were dozens of small, painful lumps that told her what she already knew-jumping off a galloping horse was only advisable when the alternative was enslavement or death at the hands of the Bashye. Still, she felt confident that she had suffered no broken bones. Another quick check told her the dagger sheathed on her hip was secure, and the arrows in their quiver were, all save one, unbroken. Such was a small miracle in and of itself.
Ellonlef tested her weight on the bad leg and nearly screamed.
“Gods good and wise,” she hissed after she caught her breath. At that moment, she would have happily carved out the living eyes of every one of the filthy bastards hunting her. Not out vengeance, but because of their sheer, blind stupidity. The world and the heavens above were coming apart, yet the single-minded fools still persisted in hunting down anyone they thought weak enough to easily defeat and rob. But such was the way among the loose-knit bands of outcasts, brigands, and traitors who shared no common ancestry, save unto themselves.
“But I was no easy prize, was I?” she growled into the night, mortified by the hatred in her heart.
The Bashye had come at her soon after she left the outpost Oratz, many leagues north of Yuzzika. It had taken them little time to kill off her string of reserve mounts, and set her to galloping north. She could not say how many hours past that had been, but it felt an eternity. Briefly, the horrors that had waited at both Yuzzika and Oratz filled her mind, despite her desperate need to seek higher, safer ground.
Even now, days after seeing the first strew of flyblown corpses in and around Fortress Yuzzika, she shuddered in revulsion. She had initially believed some great battle had ensued, leaving corpses sprawled everywhere. After that, she guessed that jackals and other carrion eaters must have swooped in to feast on the remains. All along the road north, she had held this belief, until finally reaching Oratz, where her presumption had been devastated.
The inhabitants of Oratz had not perished long before she arrived. The dead there, scattered over the ground outside the walls, had all died the same way. Each to the last had shown many wounds, but what had killed them were ragged gashes to their throats. And the way that blood had poured from those gruesome rents, leaving behind wide fans and pools of drying blood, she understood that the wounds had been inflicted while the men’s hearts were beating-
A faint noise drew Ellonlef’s attention to the north. She cocked her head, trying to hear over her thudding heart. Her fear grew at the sound of many hooves beating against the roadway, coming nearer. Though she had known the foolishness of hope, some small part of her had believed she would escape.
She swiped angry tears from her eyes and resumed her climb up the small mountain of boulders. She vowed to open her own veins before letting the Bashye turn her into a broodmare, but before that she would make them suffer-just as she had suffered at their hands since they beset her. Vengeance was not a part of her nature, but a sense of justice demanded that the Bashye pay for their assault against her, and no doubt countless others before her. Whether the world was coming apart or no, justice would have its place.
By the time she was at the highest point she could climb, the group of renegade warriors had passed by going south, then returned, riding slower, looking carefully over every inch of sandy ground to either side of the roadway. For all their vile faults, they were excellent trackers, and in short order she knew they would find where she had leapt from her horse. Not long after, they would guess that the sheltering rock pile was the only reasonable place for her to hide.
Ellonlef studied her surroundings, gauging her defenses. She stood in a wind-hollowed basin of stone with a sandy floor. Behind her, a sheer sandstone face rose up a dozen feet. To either side, boulders fell away in twenty-foot drops. To the front, the haphazard path she had taken would help funnel them into a single line. A grim smile turned her lips. They would be cautious, for she had already thinned their numbers-and that while firing arrows from the back of a galloping horse. Cautious or not, they would come, but she would be ready.
She counted her arrows out, stabbing each one into the thin layer of sand between her feet. In the end she had only eleven arrows and the broken one. This last she tossed aside.
Down below, one of the Bashye gave an excited call in an unmistakable Falsethian lilt, indicating that he had found her trail. Settling down to rest her knee, Ellonlef watched to see what they would do, unconsciously loosening her dagger in its sheath. All of her actions were second nature, for the Sisters of Najihar were trained in everything from history to healing to battle. Even after nine years of being locked away in the relative safety of Krevar, the warrior training she had received was still with her. To be sure, she was not as polished as she had once been, but she was far from helpless.
The Bashye gathered together, and Ellonlef’s heart fell. Now that they were still, she counted eight of them. Two looked to be of Izutarian heritage, by their greater size; one’s accent named him the Falsethian; the rest could have been Aradaners, Tureecians, Kelrens, or a mongrel mix of all five bloods, for all she knew. Those who were of distinct bloodlines had, at some point, proven both their ruthlessness in battle in order to gain acceptance into the clans. These men, she knew, would give her no quarter.
Heads together, they spoke quietly, all pointing in different directions, but deferring to the shortest man among them. He alone seemed to be gazing straight at her place of refuge.
Ellonlef weighed her options, and quickly decided on a course of action that would force them to react to her, rather than the other way around. Moving slowly, so as to attract no undue attention, she plucked up an arrow and nocked it the bowstring. Taking account of her higher elevation, she drew back the string and lowered her aim. Although she knew they would not show her mercy, she hesitated, fighting against what she knew she should do, and the natural abhorrence she felt for killing someone who was simply standing about talking.
They are talking about how best to capture you, a voice warned, and what depraved, brutal pleasures they will take with your flesh afterwards.
Still she hesitated.
The few people who had ever escaped from Bashye camps always told similar tales of their enslavement. Straight away, men and women alike were stripped naked, then collared and leashed like dogs, with only enough rope to allow them to gain their hands and knees. After their tormentors broke their will, the women became breeders, while the men were castrated and forced into whatever labors the Bashye needed. Enslavement in the hands of the Bashye usually lasted only a short time before death or madness took the slave. As adept at taking slaves as the Bashye were, there was no reason to spare them or keep them hale.
Ellonlef imagined herself raped by numerous men, day after day, until she became pregnant, saw herself giving birth to a child that would be taken from her as soon as it was weaned, and then taught to hate her and all peoples save for the clans. She imagined that cycle repeating, for years on end, her health diminishing with each successive birth, until she was nothing but a wasted sack of bones. In the end, her reward would be abandonment out on the Kaliayth, where the sun would scorch away the last of her life, leaving a corpse barely fit to feed vultures….