His eyes narrowed. “They’ve broken us, every band, all the resistance you put together. It was you, Kerian, who made it work, you who held us together, who heartened us and gave us a will. Without you—” His arm swept wide. “Y’went away at a bad time, Kerian.”
Ah, gods. Yet there had been no choice.
“Elder?”
Jeratt shook his head. “Gone!”
The word ran on her nerves, like lightning. “Gone? Where?”
“Don’t know. One night she was there, sittin’ at her fire. The next… gone. That was only three days after you left. There’s been none of her confusions now, nothing to help.”
“But you kept on.”
Jeratt’s chest swelled proudly. “I didn’t just keep on. I did what we’d planned, put warriors in the south, and I been back to the dales and roused ’em there, but … I couldn’t keep it going against Thagol. He’s… he’s like the sea, Kerian. We’re all scattered again.”
Looking from one to the other, the scruffy half-elf and the woman who had only days before spoke in the Court of Thanes, Stanach whistled low. Softly he said, “First time I saw you, missy, you were tripping over a Knight’s corpse on the way out the door. Then you show up in the High King’s court. Now …” He shook his head. “What in the name of Reorx’s forge are you about?”
Kerian looked at him, and the smile she crooked had little to do with humor. “Stanach, I’ve been too long gone from the forest. I will take you so far as where you are safe. After that...”
Jeratt looked at her, his mouth a thin line. In his eyes, though, she saw hope rising.
Around the basin, men and women stood. Most Kerian knew, a few faces she didn’t. Some were gone: Rhyl, who had not proved trusty; Ayensha, about whom Jeratt said they would later speak; and Elder, who had vanished one day between midnight and dawn.
Old comrades regarded Kerian variously, some pleased to see her, some angry for her sudden departure and return. Newcomers stood with shuttered eyes, waiting. Bueren Rose looked upon her warmly, but a group of strangers eyed her with thinly veiled suspicion. Each of them, four men and the two women, looked to Jeratt to reckon the mood of the occasion. These were the leaders of other bands, other outcasts, highwaymen and robbers. These Jeratt had collected in Kerian’s absence, and no one knew her. News of her, tales of her, these things they knew. In their world, that mattered nothing at all. The deed done at your side, the back watched, the Knight killed who would have killed you—these things mattered. Of these things, they had no experience with Kerian.
She stepped past Jeratt, past Stanach Hammerfell, the dwarf uneasy among all these rough, suspicious elves.
Kerian looked around at them all, all of them cautious. Out the corner of her eye, she noted Stanach. The dwarf stood watching, blue-flecked dark eyes on her. He had come to speak with her king, and he intended to do his errand then return to his thane, that doubting uncle of his who sat upon the throne of the Hylar. In his eyes she saw how far from Thorbardin he felt, and he stood very still in the face of this unwelcoming elven silence, a careful man trying to know whether the ground had suddenly shifted under his hoot heels.
Kerian laughed, suddenly and sounding like a crow. “You!” She pointed to an elf woman standing apart from the others on the other side of the fires. This one, a woman with hair like chestnut, seemed to be the one to whom others deferred. “I am Kerianseray of Qualinesti. I don’t know you. Who are you?”
The woman’s eyes narrowed. Her hand drifted toward the sword at her belt then stilled. “Feather’s Flight, and I don’t know you either.”
“I don’t care. In time maybe you will. Till then, declare yourself, Feather’s Flight, here in my place, with Lightning—” a glance toward the dwarf—“and Thunder to witness: Are you here to join me, you and all of yours to take up arms in my cause?”
“Well, I don’t know—”
“You don’t know my cause? You lie! If you have run with Jeratt, you know it. You know my cause is a king’s, and you know—” she reckoned the woman’s age, she counted on old alliances, and she gambled with her next statement—”and you know that the king’s cause is not far different from the cause of the prince whose name is honored by our elders.”
Feather’s Flight cocked her head, her lips crooked a smile. “I’ve run with Jeratt, true. What if I now choose to run away?”
Kerian laughed. “If you gave me your word to go and go in peace, I would let you go.”
The woman hadn’t expected that. She stood like a deer with her head to the wind, trying to understand a sudden, complicated scent. “You’d let me go! I come and go as I please, Kagonesti.”
Kerian shrugged. “There used to be a man named Rhyl with us. He isn’t now. He didn’t turn out to be as trusty as we like our friends to be. If I thought for even an instant you were untrustworthy, Feather’s Flight, you’d be an hour dead, and I’d be talking to someone else.”
Someone laughed, one of those beside Feather’s Flight. Someone else murmured, and Bueren Rose breathed a small sigh of relief as the outlaw stepped forward and stood before Kerian.
“We are six bands,” said Feather’s Flight. Kerian withheld a satisfied smile as she realized she’d calculated correctly and called out the woman who best represented the others. “We are from the mountains in the western part of the kingdom, past the dales. Even there heads grow on pikes like evil fruit. Some of us did know the lost prince, Porthios, whom some say perished in dragon-fire.” She stood taller. “I came from Silvanesti with him, and we cleaned the green dragons out of the Sylvan Land. I don’t know his nephew, I haven’t heard good of him, but I see you, Kerianseray. I have heard good of you. In the name of the dead, we will join you.”
The others nodded silently. Bueren thumped her shoulder, and Jeratt grinned wide. Beside the half-elf, Stanach Hammerfell had the look of a dwarf who wasn’t quite ready to relax. Kerian caught his eye and winked.
“Ay, Jeratt,” she said. “The dwarf looks like he could use a meal. Me too, for that matter. Anyone been hunting lately, or is it all bone and stone soup?”
On the hills, elves kept watch. No one counted on magic now, for with her going it seemed Elder had taken all her useful confusions. The dwarf Stanach volunteered to take his own turn at watch, and Kerian didn’t refuse him.
What will he say to his thane about all this? Kerian wondered. How will I get him to Gil so he can form some kind of opinion?
Ah, well, that was for another day’s thinking. She looked at Jeratt. Firelight made him seem older; shadows sculpted his face till Kerian might have imagined him twice his age.
“You know,” Jeratt said, “no matter how well you plan our raids, Kerian, Thagol’s going to find you the first time you kill someone. He’s like a dog sniffing down the road.”
She remembered. Absently, she rubbed the bridge of her nose. There was the old pain forming. From old habit, she gauged the headache, trying to know it for what it was. Not Thagol, hunting. Not yet. This time the throbbing behind her eyes was weariness.
“Before we fell apart, we were all over the place, several bands striking at will and no one for him to grab or follow.” He shook his head grimly. “It’s why he started this slash and burn campaign. Figured he’d cut us off from the villagers and the farmers. He did that right. No one was going to risk his life to feed us, no one would shelter us or even give us news for fear of their own lives. Let me tell you, Kerian, it all fell apart fast.”
Kerian nodded, thinking.
“The first time you kill, though,” Jeratt continued, “he’ll catch up with us, Kerian. The first time you kill, he’ll know it.”
Yes, he would. She’d thought of that. She was considering it very carefully. Her outlaw bands would begin a stealthy campaign. At dawn they would scatter through the forest, making a noose around the capital. They would continue Jeratt’s plan of random strikes, each band falling on targets as they would, in no discernible pattern. Tribute wagons, supply wagons, these were of no moment now.