His thoughts turned to more immediate matters.
He knew very little of this land and nation, only that Witeny was a politically ambiguous place, maintaining its noble lines as part of its heritage but not as a governing class. All decisions of state were handled by a national council, which was reputed to be as corrupt as any aristocracy. He had no intention of remaining a minor lord in a remote duchy and collecting a pittance of taxes from the coastal villages under his stewardship. He intended to return to his native land, and for that he needed true wealth.
Whatever coin he had taken from the keep was hardly enough, but his title as a duke was something with which to work; titles could still open ways closed to commoners. Perhaps he could claim unrest in his province and seek advice and aid from those of Karl Beáumie’s station or above. That would be a start.
The wagon lurched and jumped under him, and he gripped the bench’s edge.
“Sorry, my lord,” Comeau quickly offered. “I can’t see all the little holes in the dark.”
Sau’ilahk offered no rebuke, as he continued pondering more important matters. Then something dark caught in the corner of his sight.
It was almost as if he had glimpsed himself—his former nature as a black spirit. He turned his head too quickly and too far, straining his neck as the wind at his back blew hard across his face. Slapping the hair from his eyes, he looked more carefully.
Something rushed through the night among the north-side trees along the road. Before he could utter a warning, a dark figure in a cloak and hood shot out toward the left horse before the wagon.
The animal lurched, threw up its head, and screamed.
The figure veered off, rushing back into the trees, as the horse began to fall.
“Whoa!” Guardsman Comeau called, heaving on the reins.
The wooden shaft in the falling horse’s harness snapped as the horse collapsed against its companion, and the wagon’s left front wheel struck the first struggling beast. The horse on the right was trapped by its harness as it went down.
Sau’ilahk’s eyes widened when the wagon lurched upward, nearly throwing him into the back. As the wagon toppled sideways, he jumped.
Inertia threw him toward the trees to the left, and by pure chance he missed any of their trunks in the dark. When he hit the earth, his feet gave way, and he tumbled out of control. Shock numbed his mind at the pain of being battered and whipped by bushes and leaves as low branches snapped under his wild fall.
Sau’ilahk rolled to stop on his stomach with cold, damp mulch against the side of his face and some in his mouth. He was too stunned at first to move, and then pain came back.
Was he injured, broken, harmed in any way? This could not be happening to him after waiting so very long to have flesh again.
Hearing the noise and shouts of men, he carefully pushed himself up and turned on one knee.
A fire burned at the front of the overturned wagon resting on its left side. At least one of the downed horses was screaming. The lantern had broken and its oil ignited, and flames threatened to reach the wagon’s bench. Two of his men tried unsuccessfully to free a third one pinned under the wagon’s side. Something dark, likely blood, leaked from the side of the man’s mouth.
Guardsman Comeau stumbled toward the wagon’s front and shielded his face from the flames as he tried to reach the horses. Amid confusion, the four keep guards dropped from their horses to follow the other three Sumans.
Looking about in shock, Sau’ilahk saw that the orb’s trunk had toppled to the roadside and was exposed from beneath the tarp still dangling from the wagon’s upturned side. One keep guard ran by, ignoring the chest as he tried to pull the tarp free and tamp down the flames.
Sau’ilahk struggled up, but not to run in and help. He turned all ways as he looked among the trees. The person who had caused all of this was still out there in the dark.
“Grab the bottom!”
Sau’ilahk turned back as Lieutenant Martelle was directing the others in trying to tilt the wagon to free the pinned Suman.
“Lift on the count of three,” Martelle shouted.
At the count, two of Sau’ilahk’s men and another keep guard heaved but to no avail.
Sau’ilahk had no interest in this, and he hurried toward the orb’s trunk. Then he spotted Hazh’thüm with two more Suman guards at the wagon’s rear.
“Retrieve and guard the trunk,” he ordered in Sumanese. “Then find the treasury as well.”
With a sharp nod, Hazh’thüm waved to his men and pointed toward the trunk. They both ran in, grabbing for its end handles. As the second man touched it, dust or a sudden mist appeared to blow in around him upon the wind.
The cloaked figure took shape before Sau’ilahk’s eyes.
The figure rammed a shimmering blade through the Suman guard’s yellow silk tabard, and the man dropped his end of the orb’s trunk and fell across it. Sau’ilahk stood frozen at the sight of the tall, slender, masked figure with a now-darkened blade in its hand.
Hazh’thüm shouted something that made Sau’ilahk blink and look away for an instant. When he looked back ...
The other Suman had dropped his end of the trunk and reached for his sword’s hilt. The cloaked figure lunged in. The blade had barely sunk into the man’s chest when the cloaked one vanished in a whirl of dust swept away by the wind.
The second Suman guard toppled before Hazh’thüm arrived. No blade protruded from the man’s chest, though his yellow tabard began to darken. Blood soaked through and spread in a circle as his back hit the road. He lay still and silent, and his eyes remained open.
Hazh’thüm spun about, looking in all directions.
Two Suman guards were dead. A third was still pinned under the wagon and dying. Oil on the roadside still burned brightly. And Sau’ilahk shook off his shock and looked everywhere for any sign of the one who appeared to have blown away on the wind. Then he realized the wind no longer came straight in from the west.
It now came a bit more from the north. He and his contingent were on the road’s north side. As he stepped fully out of the trees, he peered southeast across the road and ignored the groans of the man still pinned under the wagon.
Three of his Sumans were functional and would obey unto death—for greater fear of him. He was uncertain how far the keep guards would obey their duke after what they had just seen.
“Hazh’thüm!” he barked. “Take your men and drag the trunk and treasury chest into the trees behind me.” He turned on Lieutenant Martelle. “Take your men and search the south-side woods more to the east. That has to be where this assassin went. Work your way west against the wind to flush out the assailant.”
Only then did any of them notice the sudden silence. The horses had gone quiet, and the pinned Suman lay still and slack with his eyes open and unblinking. Lieutenant Martelle, his expression unreadable, glanced at the man.
Without a word, he led his own men around the wagon’s back.
Guardsman Comeau began to follow, but Sau’ilahk stopped him.
“I have another need for you.”
The forest to both sides blurred past as the wagon raced along the road, and Wynn clung to the sidewall with one hand. With her staff lying beside her, she kept her free hand clenched around Jausiff’s—Aupsha’s—device made from an orb key.
On one knee, Chane gripped the wagon’s opposite wall. Every bit of him except for his eyes was now covered, and the glasses hung around his neck on a leather cord.
Wynn could barely make out Shade loping out ahead as Osha drove the wagon’s horses too hard. It wasn’t a safe speed, but she didn’t tell him to slow down.