Her feet hurt. Her legs hurt. The cold water had eased her throat but made her stomach hurt. She ran, she walked, she ran again, swallowing the taste of iron.
Tired and hungry and just as pigheaded as her mother had called her, Mirian was not going to quit.
Together, they had a chance.
On his own, Tomas Hagen would be one more body sprawled on the road.
“I heard that mages can talk to animals. And make trees walk.” Although he spoke quietly, Chard sounded excited by the thought of talking animals and walking trees.
“Why?” Armin sounded confused.
“Why what?”
“Why would they make trees walk?”
“I don’t know about every mage, but our mage, if she could make them walk, she could make them walk out of her way. Make the path easier for her. Or she could move them to hide her tracks as she left the path and headed to a secret mage hideout!”
That, Reiter admitted silently, would be a useful skill. Chard’s secret mage hideout was a figment of the soldier’s overactive imagination, but they hadn’t found their mage beside the trail and they hadn’t caught up on the way back to the border. He stood by the river, by the discarded wagons the Imperial army had emptied of gravel to stabilize the ford, and stared into Aydori.
“Where to now, Captain? Do we rejoin the lieutenant?”
“No.” He spoke without thinking and then had to find words beyond his belief that the lieutenant was an officious little shit. “You heard her mother…”
“She gone to Jaspyr Hagen! He come rip you throat!”
“…she’s looking for her beastman. He’ll be in the battle.”
“With luck, he’s dead.” Best spat to one side. “One less abomination.”
“Do they only have one?” Chard wondered, reaching between the buttons on his tunic to scratch. “Because my Nan has three little yappy things and I heard Lieutenant Geurin say he had a pack of hunting dogs, so maybe the women in Aydori have whole packs of beasts to service them.”
“It doesn’t work like that,” Reiter growled, his tone reminding them that he was a captain and they weren’t, so they’d better not ask him how he knew because all he could tell them was she hadn’t seemed like the kind of girl who had a pack of beasts to service her. And he couldn’t tell them that.
“If I had a pack of girl beasts…”
“Chard.”
Proving he wasn’t entirely stupid, Chard shut up.
There’d be a command post at the bridge. Staff officers. Swords, not Shields. Who’d ask what he was doing there if he was under orders and if he believed the girl those orders told him to capture had headed for the battle. The leadership of the Imperial army was, among other things, predictable.
He pulled his boots from the mud churned up by hundreds of similar boots, felt them slipping off his heels as the mud pulled back, and stepped into the river. “Come on.”
“What if we got in front of her, Captain? Passed her without seeing her?” Unlike Chard’s casual idiocy or Best’s religious fundamentalism, Armin asked questions weighted only by the facts as he knew them. “What if she’s just not here yet?”
“Yeah, but if we’re in front of her,” Chard snorted, “why isn’t she using her magic to pick us off, one by one?”
“Because she’s a lady?”
“She lies down with beasts!” Best snarled.
“Well, yeah, but…”
Reiter reached the other bank and turned in time to see Armin’s frown. Well, yeah, but indeed. They could only act on the information they had, and the mages of Aydori lay with beasts. They didn’t even deny it. “What if she changed into a bird and flew away?” he muttered.
Chard smiled up at him. “It’d have to be an owl, Cap. It was dark. Or a nightingale. Oh, or she could have waited until morning and slipped into that flock of starlings.”
“Can they do that?” Armin wondered, stepping up out of the river onto a rock and avoiding the mud.
“No.” Best seemed positive.
“But they’re mages,” Chard protested.
“Mages can’t change shape.”
“The beastmen change shape.”
“Mages aren’t beastmen.”
“But they lie down with beasts? Right? Maybe they catch the changing thing from them.”
Reiter ignored the rest of the argument. If she was heading for the battle, they’d head for the battle. If they found her searching for her beastman among the bodies, good. If the tangle still worked, it would take her down again. If she’d broken it, he had no way to capture a mage and there’d be ranking officers on the battlefield who understood a soldier couldn’t put his faith in ancient artifacts. He’d happily dump the whole mess in their laps and walk away from the problem entirely.
Danika couldn’t feel the border like Ryder could, like their baby would be able to if it was Pack, but she knew exactly where she was when she saw the wound cut into the forest, the stumps radiating out from the logging trail. Straightening the border between the Duchy of Pyrahn and Aydori had given the duke access to the timber of the Teryn Valley. The empire had a need for timber, and the duke had been happy to supply it at a price. She bit back a laugh that threatened to tumble over into hysteria. It seemed like the empire would be getting its own timber from here on.
Kirstin made a noise at the sight of the three mail coaches, a choked-off cry that brought a laugh from one of the men beside her.
“Well, that’s it for your beastmen, then,” Murphy smirked. “Thank fuck they can’t cross the border. Everyone knows that,” he added when Danika turned toward him. “It is true, right? They can’t cross the border?”
“Why would she tell you?” Tagget muttered as the lieutenant strutted forward to meet the drivers and Sergeant Black corralled them in a lose semicircle of soldiers.
The horses were larger than the mountain ponies used in Aydori, but still sturdier looking than Danika had expected given that the speed of the mail coaches crossing the ever-expanding Kresentian Empire held the conquered pieces together as much as the army did. The newspapers Ryder had brought into Aydori in monthly bundles praised the growing network of roads and posting houses that delivered news and laws and letters from sons and daughters who’d been drafted into supporting the empire’s massive infrastructure. Of course, that same network had taken those sons and daughters away in the first place, but even allowing for Imperial propaganda, the citizenry seemed to approve of being connected.
“Leopald may be a dangerous egomaniac,” Ryder had declared, “but he’s not stupid. He has a lot of disparate peoples to govern and conformity will wipe out rebellion faster than force.” Dropping the folded paper onto a lopsided pile, he’d snorted and added, “Not that he isn’t willing to apply force.”
Ryder should have caught up to them by now. Gripping a fold of her filthy skirt between her bound hands, Danika told herself he was needed at the battle, needed to drive the Imperial army away from Aydori, needed to organize counterattacks and needed to be there where Aydori soldiers could see him and know that with their Pack Leader in the battle, they couldn’t lose. However much he might have wanted to race after her, he couldn’t do it without delegating at least some of his responsibilities. But he’d be here soon.
He couldn’t cross the border, but he wouldn’t have come alone.
Danika could see the same thought on the faces of the women around her. Their husbands could leave Aydori even if Ryder couldn’t.
They were standing upwind of the horses, but after a day and a half, the scent of the Pack had apparently faded past the point where it could panic prey. Pity. Standing as he was between the first and second coach, Lieutenant Geurin would have been crushed beneath the wheels had the horses bolted. The horses continued to stand frustratingly still.