She ran, scrambling down the hill to the road, slipping on old leaves and grass, righting herself every time. Heart slamming hard against her ribs, she bolted for the screaming horse. In one swift motion, she slit its throat. Blood spurted from the severed artery, rising like a crimson fountain, splashing Kerian’s hands, her face. Beside the beast lay its master, the Knight with two arrows in his thigh. Kerian saw his eyes wide and white in the shadows across the road. Helpless, he lifted a hand to the blood-soaked elf woman standing over him, to plead for mercy or to ward off a killing stroke.
“Do it!” Jeratt shouted. “Now!”
Now, or the draconians would hear the commotion and come to investigate.
Kerian gripped the bone handle, and as she did something hit her from behind, a hard weight driving her to the ground. She lost her knife, the dwarf-given weapon flung from her hand. A voiced cursed her in Qualinesti as the driver of the cart jammed his knee into her back, crushing air from her lungs. The elf grabbed a handful of her hair.
There was her knife, flashing in the sunlight, across her field of vision, down toward her own throat. Her cry of fear and protest sounded like strangling.
Someone thundered, “No!” and the elf strangling her jerked once, then again.
He toppled, the release of his weight as painful as the weight itself.
Kerian tried to gain her feet and fell back. A hard hand grabbed her and dragged her up. Jeratt’s bearded face came close to hers.
“Go,” he shouted. “One of the horses bolted—they’ll see it on the road. Go!”
Go… where? Strip the Knights of weapons and whatever gear they could use. Sink the tribute into the stream, let the fine steel rust and rot, useless to Thagol or the dragon.
Kerian ran, seeing the elf who’d tried to kill her out of the corner of her eye. He’d died of two arrows in the back, Jeratt’s and Ander’s. From the look of them, they’d struck at the same instant.
Jeratt and Ander sank the tribute, hauling the sacks of weapons to the stream, shoving those blades that had spilled out back among their brethren and letting the weight of steel hold the weapons under the water. While they worked, Kerian took the boots of the Knight with the smallest feet. She grabbed the swords of each and their scabbards and belts. Before her companions had returned, she stripped off the black mail shirts and left the Knights face up and staring at the overhanging willows from dead eyes.
She didn’t stop to give in to the sickness roiling in her belly until she, Jeratt, and Ander had fled the scene of the killing. Then she vomited, quietly, violently in a thicket so far from the road that the sounds of furious draconian discovery never reached her.
“You killed one of us,” Kerian said, the sour taste of bile in her mouth hours later. “You killed that Qualinesti. That’s not what we’re supposed to be doing. We’re supposed to be fighting the Knights and—”
“Just about anyone who’s trying to kill us,” Jeratt drawled, “and that elf was trying to kill you.”
Kerian snorted. “He didn’t know who we were or whether he was in danger—” She shook her head, trying to dispel the memory of the elf’s body flung away by the force of two arrows. “You could have hit him, pulled him off me. You didn’t have to kill him.”
“There wasn’t time!” spat Jeratt.
Silence stood between them, Kerian on one side of the campfire, Jeratt and Ander on the other. They had no hare on a spit over the flames, and no one had gone to catch trout from the nearby stream. Jeratt was eating a hunk of cheese and chewing on a small loaf of hard bread, which they had gotten from Felan’s wife the night before. Chewing, Jeratt jerked his head at Ander, who slipped a hand into the pouch at his belt. Kerian heard the crackle of stiff parchment as Ander unfolded it.
Jeratt jerked his head again, Ander handed the paper across the fire. Little sparks jumped up, Kerian took it quickly.
“Read,” Jeratt said.
She did, her eye leaping along the few short lines of a terse message. It commended the bearer to “the most esteemed Lord Eamutt Thagol of Qualinost and late of Monastery Bone,” and it urged the Lord Knight to reward the bearer according to the measure of his merit.
“Found this on the dead driver,” Jeratt said around the last bite of cheese.
Kerian stared at the message.
“You’re welcome,” Jeratt said dryly.
She looked up, almost absently. “Thank you.”
Ander leaned closer to the fire. “He’d have killed you, Kerian. He was trying to kill you.”
The fire hissed over green wood. “I know the elf was trying to kill me,” she said curtly, then, softer, “I was there.”
Kerian balled up the parchment. “A collaborator! A cowardly collaborator working with the Dark Knights.” She made to throw the balled sheet into the fire—then caught herself in time. She held it a little above the flame, then took it back and smoothed it across her knee.
“What?” said Jeratt, looking from her to the wrinkled page.
Kerian shook her head as she folded the parchment neatly along the original lines. “Nothing. Yet.” She leaned forward. “We need to let Felan and Bayel know. Anyone they speak to could be working for Thagol—they’re taking more of a risk than we guessed, helping us.”
Jeratt snorted. “We aren’t going to stay here and make a career out of kicking Thagol.”
Their plan was to make short, sharp strikes in this part of the kingdom then slip away back home, let Thagol puzzle over things here for a while, then take up their campaign against his Knights from Lightning Falls. Jeratt had traveled back there twice, speaking to Elder, speaking with Ayensha, Bueren Rose, and the others.
“Right,” Kerian said, “but they have to live here. I’m talking about setting down roots. Let’s kick Thagol a few more times before we leave. Let him know trouble is brewing.”
Jeratt nodded slowly in agreement, the grudging expression on his face saying he wondered just who was in charge sometimes, him or her.
She slapped her knee and looked around hungrily. “What’s to eat?”
Jeratt laughed. “Used to be cheese and bread. Not much more now than a heel and a rind. Gotta get a better belly, Kerian.” He jerked his chin at Ander. “You too, youngster. You’re gonna see worse than you saw today. You’ll do worse, too. Might as well not do it hungry, eh?”
Too late to hunt, too late to fish, Kerian and Ander went to sleep hungry. It surprised her, waking in the middle of the night to the sound of Jeratt tending the fire, that she could sleep at all. She glanced at Ander and saw him staring at the leafy canopy, eyes wide and nervous. He slid a glance her way. She saw him shudder and reach for the scabbarded sword lying near to his hand. They all had new weapons this day, looted from corpses. Ander’s fingers didn’t cringe to touch the pommel of a dead Knight’s weapon.
In the morning, without consulting Jeratt, she told Ander to slip quietly through the forest first to Felan’s farm and then Bayel’s. “Tell them we know there was at least one collaborator among the elves here, that there might well be more. Tell them everything we discussed last night, offer them the honest choice—back out now, stay as they have been, or come to fight.”
Ander nodded, eager to undertake the mission. Jeratt watched the two, eyes narrow, expression hard and unreadable.
“After you do that, don’t come back hem” She slipped a finger into the neck of her shirt and hooked the slender gold chain that held two halves of the king’s ring. In a quick gesture, she removed one half and put it into Ander’s hand. “Now, before you leave, speak with Jeratt—”
Jeratt, glaring at her now.
“—and he will tell you how to get to Lightning Falls. You must go carefully, because you’re returning to the area where Knights have been searching for me and very likely now they are also searching for you. When you come near Lightning Falls, you will be challenged by folk who look like”—she laughed “—who look like us. They’re outlaws like us, but answer the challenge humbly and quickly, no arrogance with these folk. Tell them you are from Jeratt and me, be quick, and show my ring. Tell whoever challenges you that seek a woman named simply ‘Elder,’ and tell her all that has happened here.”