We left the campsite and hoped to locate a nearby place to set our trap. Instead, the trail widened and remained closed on each side, one to a wall of granite and the other a sheer drop-off of a thousand steps and no good place to set our trap. We continued on the trail until almost midday, and I was getting anxious and trying hard not to show it. If the pair we were after had purchased what they needed early in the morning, we might encounter them at any time.
The trail started to descend steeply. Near the bottom, it traveled along a stream bank between two smaller hills, each no taller than the room of a large house. On either side grew lush shrubs taller than my head, thick and tangled. The distance from them to the trail was only ten steps, and we had the advantage of height. One on each side gave us all the advantage we needed to ensure our success.
“We don’t want to kill them,” I said without thinking of anything but the information about Kondor we hoped to gain.
“We don’t?” Elizabeth brought me back to my senses with a question I now had to explain. My mind whirled with possible explanations, but I eventually decided to tell part of the truth. “If one of them can speak our language, we can find out all the answers. If we kill one, it may be the one we need.” It felt better to tell her that, but not all. Not yet. And that caused me to feel horrible.
She had been the one to take us off the streets, to feed, educate, and nourish us. She trusted us, and we were supposed to trust her. If she ever learned we hid things from her, our relationship would crumble. Kendra and I might find ourselves living on the streets again. However, even more damning, were the feelings of betrayal. While they were not factual in a sense, we did nothing but hold back suspected personal information, they were no less real and necessary.
I finally responded as if I’d taken the time to consider her question. “I think that the way between these hills is so narrow it provides a chance to attack without killing. We can stake out our horses behind the hills, and locate two places where we’re hidden, one on each side of the path.”
“And what then? Talk them into surrendering?”
Her tone warned me. I blundered on. “No, we stand from our cover and fire, one arrow each, at the thigh of the rider nearest.”
She rolled her eyes and sighed so heavily I had plenty of time to regret my suggestions. She said, “What do we do when they either run or shoot arrows our way? What if they have recruited more men? What if they anticipate this place as being dangerous and ride in prepared, or possibly return to their camp by another route and find your sister and Tater alone and unprepared to defend themselves?”
I tried to quell the hot anger rising inside. The more mental cold water thrown on it, the more steam rose. Even I was appalled at my comparison. So, came the unlikely decision to speak my mind, weak as it is.
Keeping my voice soft and earnest, “You bring up good questions. I cannot answer many of them but can use their past actions to infer what they will do. They used this road so they will return the same way. If they have more men, we will know it because I intend to find a place where we can watch the approaching road and determine if there are problems with more men, or whatever. We will then fall back to this spot and wait unless there are more men.”
“If they ride through here with arrows drawn?”
“My magic will be ready to foul any arrows aimed at us.”
She curled her fingers into small fists and placed them on her hips. “There. Was that so hard?”
“Hard?”
“To speak to me as an adult equal and offer your magic?”
That sounded like one of those trick questions both her and Kendra tossed my way lately. There was no right answer. If admitted, it meant I’d finally spoken to her as an adult equal, and by default, I had not been doing that earlier. That made me wrong. If I didn’t agree, I was still wrong. There seemingly was no way out of the situation.
No, that would be an incorrect conclusion. There were at least three possibilities. A profound apology might work. A new subject could be introduced to distract her, or even asking her opinion. Or a combination of those three. “Why don’t we leave the horses here and go check down the road to a place where we can watch? You can join me there.”
She didn’t appear happy but agreed. “The first arrow will be aimed at his leg, but the second at his heart.”
Fair enough. I’d already decided much the same but wisely said nothing. She’d think I was stealing her best ideas if I mentioned it. Walking on the dirt path, or trail, or road, was difficult because of the numerous dips, holes, and protrusions that were all but invisible in the thick undergrowth. I snickered at one point when she stumbled, and no sooner had that happened than Cantor, the god of sinful pride, intervened and I found myself face down.
Princess Elizabeth had the grace not to laugh. She was a better woman than me.
The sides of the road spread apart and in front of us appeared an area of rolling hills. The road could be seen reaching and crossing the top of two, one fairly near, and the second a good way off. A pair of riders approaching would be in sight for a considerable time. We perched on a rock slab warming in the morning sun. While still cold on our butts, it would soon absorb heat.
“I want to kill them, you know?” Her words came as a shock and shouldn’t have. In reality, I should have been as spiteful as her, not caring where they came from or what their business was. They had tried to kill me, so I should return the act. Simple. No questions.
The problem was that they were also the first people to look like me. Again, simple. And yet complicated, complex, and unknown. Did Kendra and I have the right to try finding our people at the expense of placing our benefactor in danger? Besides, wouldn’t half the serfs in the kingdom envy our positions and jump at the chance to serve Elizabeth in a similar role?
I said, “Me too.”
“As soon as you find all you can about your past from the one who speaks our language, you might.”
It was said in a statement, not a question. If there was any trace of anger, fear, or trepidation, it did not come through in her tone. She sounded almost like we felt. A combination of exuberance and terror. My eyes remained on the far hill and the road. “Listen, if either of us misses with our first arrow, we don’t take chances. Both of us will take killing shots at him with the second.”
“If it is not a man? A woman? Can you do it?”
“The same rules apply,” I said it with words so hard they felt brittle leaving my mouth.
She gave me the same eye-roll Kendra did when I said something stupid. If I opened my mouth again, it could compound my error, so remained quiet. She was right. If it was a woman, especially an attractive one, there needed to be more reason to kill. Then, as I watched that far-off hill and road, my twisted mind asked, why? Why did it require more reason to kill a woman than a man?
I chanced a glance at Elizabeth and found the corners of her mouth twitching in an almost smile. Despite my pledge to never use magic on her, I considered dragging down the corners of her mouth as if each side held the weight of a large turnip.
Motion in the distance saved her from my imagined wrath. My eyes caught a glimpse of two horses moving on the road at the second hill. We had plenty of time and were safe from being spotted as long as we remained still.
Elizabeth said softly as if they might hear her at such an extreme distance. “There they are.”
“When they dip below the crest of the nearer hill we’ll move.”