Only there weren’t any. That was the problem.
“It could be someone trying to Know us against the current,” he said at last. “Someone reaching out to establish an initial link with us. If so, I’ve turned it aside.” For now. He didn’t say it, but Damien could hear the words. This one time.
“Our enemy?” she asked.
He hesitated. Damien imagined he was thinking of the hundreds of miles between them and the supposed home site of their enemy, of the mountains and the cities and God alone knew what else that divided them, all of which would wreak havoc with such a Working. A Knowing worked across such a distance, across myriad obstacles and against the current, was almost doomed to failure.
“If so,” he said at last, “he has phenomenal power.”
“So what do we do?” Damien asked. Not liking the darkness in his tone at all.
The, Hunter looked south. What did those eyes see, which were always focused on the earth-power? For once Damien didn’t envy him his special Sight. “We go on. It’s all we can do. Perhaps once we cross the mountains we’ll be beyond his scrutiny . . . perhaps.”
They mounted up once more and continued south along the bank of the river. The ground was becoming more and more rocky, which helped to obscure their trail, but it was bad for the horses’ footing. More than once, Damien had to dismount to dig out a sharp rock from his horse’s hoof, and once they had to stop long enough for him to Heal the sole of Hesseth’s mount, where a stone chip had gashed deeply into the tender flesh behind the toe-guards. Several times they had to lead the animals down to the river—no easy task in itself—and make their way warily through shallow water that ran black as ink, obscuring any dangers that might lie underneath. Their fear of earthquakes meant that Damien dared not use Senzei’s trick, using the glow of like earth-fae through the water to detect irregularities beneath the surface, but Tarrant led them forward with his own special Sight and thus they proceeded without mishap.
Periodically Tarrant would signal for them to stop, and he would study the earth-power anew. Not just for signs of ambush now, although that was still a concern. The foreign trace he had failed to interpret clearly worried him, and he began to stop more and more frequently in an attempt to fix on it. Damien wondered if he had ever before been so completely frustrated in his attempt to Know something.
“Is it getting stronger?” he asked him once. The Hunter’s expression grew grim, but he said nothing. Which was in itself a kind of affirmation.
“Let’s say I don’t like the feel of things,” he muttered at last. “Not at all.”
“What about our pursuers?” Hesseth asked him.
He looked about, studying the earth-fae carefully. “Those who follow are still some distance behind us,” he said at last. “But those who lie in wait are closer than I would like. And it’s strange . . .” He bit his lower lip, considering. “In the other Protectorates I had the distinct impression that there were men scouring the woods for us, a general but unfocused effort . . . but here the feeling is different. Much more focused.” He looked back at them. “I think it’s crucial for you two to get safely across to the east before the sun rises. That’ll put you in a different current, safe from whoever’s trying to reach us.”
“Is there something specific you’re afraid of?” Damien asked him.
The Hunter’s expression darkened. “I’m wary of anything that has the power to defy me.” For a moment he sounded tired; it was a strangely human attribute. “The foreign trace muddies the current enough that it’s hard for me to tell just how far ahead our enemies are. I don’t like that. And I don’t like the thought that it might get worse as we continue going south.”
“You think it’s some kind of attack?”
“I don’t know what it is. I’d prefer not to have to find out.” He pulled his horse about so that it faced to the south once more, and urged it into motion.
“Let’s just hope the pass comes up soon,” he muttered.
It was more a gap than a pass proper, more a wound in the earth’s rocky flesh than anything which Nature had intended. Some quake in ages past had split through the mountainside, and centuries of wind, water, and ice had worried at the resulting crack until it was wide enough—barely—for a mounted man to pass through at the bottom. Its walls were riddled with parallel faults that slashed diagonally through the rock, and erosion had worn at the varying layers until the whole of it looked like a bricklayer’s nightmare. It was easier to imagine that vast, trapezoidal slabs of stone had been affixed to the walls of the gap, and that the mortar between them had been washed away, than it was to envision the whole as one solid piece which time and the elements had carved up so drastically.
They stared at it for some time in silence, each traveler cocooned in his own misgivings. At last Damien gave vent to their joint response.
“Shit,” he muttered.
“Hardly encouraging,” the Hunter agreed.
He urged his horse a few steps closer—the animals didn’t seem to like it any more than they did—and took a good look at the walls of the crevasse. And cursed again, softly. No doubt Tarrant was examining it for flaws, tracing the lines of earth-fae as they ran through the channels in the rock, seeing where it might give, seeing where it might be solid. To Damien it just looked bad.
“Should we-” he began, but as he turned back toward Tarrant and Hesseth, the Neocount’s expression silenced him.
“Don’t Work!” the Hunter warned, in a tone that was becoming all too familiar.
He pulled his horse sharply around and went away from the crevasse, fast. Even as he rejoined his party the earth began to tremble. He saw Tarrant assessing the terrain with a practiced eye, checking for immediate dangers, and he did the same. Hesseth, who had grown up on the plains, didn’t share their instinctive reaction, but she was sharp enough to move with them when they forced their mounts—now skittish and hard to control—a few yards back to the north, where the ground looked more solid.
To the east of them the mountains rumbled, the earthquake’s roar magnified in the hollow chambers that riddled the ancient rock like sound in a musical instrument. The horses stepped about anxiously, trying to keep their balance as the ground bucked and twisted beneath them. A granite slab overhead came loose with a crack and hurtled down into the river just ahead of them. Then another. Spray plumed up in white sheets and fell over them like rain. The animals were frightened enough that they might have bolted, but even they seemed to know that there was nowhere to go, and the party managed to keep control of them. Barely. It was, as Damien had feared, a Bad One. Not their first on this trip by any means, but that didn’t make it any less frightening.
At last the rumbling faded, and the ground about them settled down. There was a gash in the earth just south of them which hadn’t been there before, and they had to jump the horses across it to get back to the mouth of the pass. The broken walls looked twice as imposing as before, Damien thought. As if Nature herself had seen fit to give them a reminder of what havoc she could wreak, once they were committed to that narrow space.
The Neocount pulled up alongside Damien. His horse was still jumpy, and for once he was unable to calm it with a touch; the earth-fae was still running molten from the earthquake’s outpouring, and not even an adept dared make contact with it.
“Well,” the Hunter began, “I see no real alternative—”
Shots rang out in the crisp night air, three distinct explosions that split the night with a crack. One of them hit the rock beside Tarrant, so that chips of granite flew at him.
One scored the ground by the feet of Hesseth’s mount. And the third-
Damien’s horse squealed in pain and terror and bucked. It happened so fast the priest barely had time to react. His hand closed about the pommel of his saddle with spastic force as he pressed his knees into the horse’s flanks, desperately trying to keep his seat. He was aware of Hesseth’s horse wheeling to the north of him—also wounded?—and of Tarrant crying out orders which he had no way of hearing. Shots rang out again, but he had no way of knowing if any of them had hit their mark; his entire world had shrunk to the limit of a horse’s reach, and every fiber of his being was focused on its motion, its terror, and his own mounting danger.