“You…you don’t have the silver hair. Are you an angel?” The girl spoke slowly into the silence. “Ma said we’d be safe if we got to the angels.” She stood up, almost as if she were offering herself as some form of sacrifice.
Saryn swallowed. She wanted to vault from the saddle and take the child in her arms. Instead, she blinked back the burning in her eyes and smiled as warmly as she could. “We are the angels of Westwind, and you will be safe with us. Can you walk over here so that you can ride with me?”
“My feet hurt…the rocks…” As she spoke, the girl slowly stepped around the bush and moved toward Saryn. Her hair was red, like that of all those slain, and she already had traces of freckles on her face, especially on her cheeks. She wore calf-length gray trousers and a faded gray tunic over some sort of undertunic. Streaks of blood ran across her feet and ankles. When she reached the shoulder of Saryn’s mount, she lifted her arms. Her brown eyes held both trust and fear-or those were the feelings Saryn sensed.
Saryn leaned down and lifted her, amazed at how thin and light the child was. She must be close to starving. Then she set the girl before her and turned the mount. “We’re going to join the others.” After a moment, she asked, “What’s your name?”
“Adiara, Angel.”
“Where are you from?”
“Neltos.”
Saryn had never heard of it, but then, there were all too many places in the world whose names remained unfamiliar. She wondered if she’d ever learn them all. “Where is Neltos?”
“The market town is Meltosia. We didn’t go through Kyphrien. We went around it at night. Ma didn’t say why. She made me promise to be quiet.”
“Where were you going?”
“Ma and Da said we were going to Suthya.”
“Did they tell you why?” Saryn reined up on the road. She was careful to keep her mount pointed away from the overturned cart although the guards had already moved the bodies to the edge of the clearing, where they were piling stones over them.
Murkassa eased her mount closer to the commander’s.
“Lord Karthanos…he was doing bad things to folks like us. That was what Da said.”
“Folks like you?”
“You know, Angel. Redheads. We turn red in the sun, too.” Adiara stopped speaking, and she looked at the squad leader. “You don’t have silver hair. Are you an angel?”
“I am from Westwind…now,” Murkassa replied. “The commander is truly one of the angels. She came from the stars. So did the Marshal, and she has black hair.”
“Not all of the guards of Westwind have silver hair,” Saryn said gently. “Some do, and some of their daughters do, also.”
“You have children?”
“We are women,” Saryn said, somewhat dryly. “Some of us have children.”
“Will you take me with you?”
“Yes.” From what the girl had said, Saryn doubted she had any relatives who would want her, and Saryn had no intention of riding down through the eastern Westhorns and through Gallos on the off chance of finding any who might want Adiara. “You must understand that Westwind is cold much of the year.”
“You won’t let anyone hurt me, will you?”
“No.” Saryn paused, then asked, “Will you tell me when all this…happened?”
“This morning, Angel. We stopped for the night down at the other end of the vale. There’s a pool in the stream. There was a hole in the rocks where we could shelter. We had only set out…” Tears seeped from the girl’s eyes. “Ma told me to run…and not look back.” She shuddered, and her hands clutched the base of the horse’s mane.
“How many of them were there?” Saryn asked quickly. There was little point in allowing Adiara to dwell on the actual events.
The girl looked around, taking in the twenty guards, mostly around the cairn, except for the outriders posted as guards. “As many as you…I think.”
“No one ran after you?”
“A man rode after me, but he didn’t go into the trees.”
Saryn nodded. “Did he try to follow you farther? Did he say anything?”
“He said I was too young to bother with. Someone else said I’d die in the woods.”
“Miserable brigands,” murmured the single guard beside Murkassa.
Adiara raised her head. “They were not bandits…” She shivered. “They wore armor under their rags. Uncle Rastyn said so. Then, they took out their swords…” Her words stopped.
“That’s enough,” Saryn said gently, wrapping one arm around the girl, who had started to shiver again. “You’ve told us enough.”
For a time, the only sound in the clearing was that of rocks dropping on rocks as the guards finished the cairn.
“What do you plan?” Murkassa finally asked.
“To go hunting,” replied Saryn. “They’ll expect it. So we’ll have to be careful. Very careful.” Careful enough that we can remove all of them. “The girl will have to come with us.”
“It might be good for her.”
Would it? Saryn had her doubts.
“Will you catch them, Angel?”
“We’ll see what we can do.” Saryn wasn’t Ryba. She couldn’t see whether she and the squad would be able to deal with the false bandits, but they did need to know more, and only by tracking the armsmen could they learn what was behind the attack on the travelers.
X
The false bandits had left tracks easy enough to follow as they had headed eastward, in the general direction of Gallos and the next valley, where the roads split into those to Lornth, Gallos, and northern Lornth or Suthya. The hoofprints had all been similar, with an imprint of “G” within a square, indicating that the mounts had been shod by the same smith or farrier, most likely in the service of the Prefect of Gallos.
Even though the brigand armsmen had close to half a day’s head start, as second squad continued through the afternoon at a moderate walk, Saryn could sense that the Westwind contingent was gaining ground. In late afternoon, when the white sun had dropped below the tops of the western peaks, and the road was covered in shadow, the squad neared another stream.
“Ser!” called Chyanci, one of the outriders, who had reined up at the edge of the water on the south side of the road. “Over here!”
With Adiara still seated before her, Saryn eased the big chestnut gelding toward the outrider and the stream.
Not only were there hoofprints trampled into the mud, but Chyanci leaned down and pulled a grayish cloth or rag with blood on it out of one of the scrub oaks growing on the uphill bank of the stream. “Looks like one of them was wounded, maybe pretty badly. Some of the blood hasn’t hardened.”
“They can’t be all that far ahead,” offered Murkassa. “How close do you think we are?”
“I’m no tracker,” Saryn admitted, “but the imprints in the mud are still crisp. That discarded wound dressing hasn’t hardened. I can’t sense anyone that close to us. They’re more than a kay away, but I’d guess less than ten kays. They’re probably going to stop near where the three roads branch in different directions.”
“What do you have in mind, ser?”
“We’ve pushed the mounts some,” replied Saryn. “I’d rather not press that hard. They’re not going back to Gallos, and we’ll take them on our terms.”
Murkassa nodded.
“I’ll go ahead with the outriders to make sure that they’re still headed east. I don’t want us surprised, either.” Saryn eased the gelding closer to Murkassa, then said to Adiara, “You’ll have to stay with the other guards.”
“I can do that, Angel.”
“Good.” Saryn lifted the girl and passed her across to the squad leader. She was still surprised at how light the girl was for her age, which had to be around eight or nine. “Find a good bivouac site somewhere along the stream here.”
“We’ll take care of it, ser.”
Saryn turned the gelding. “Chyanci, Abylea!”
“Yes, ser.” The two outriders rode to join Saryn.
“We’re going to scout out the road to the east.” The commander turned her mount and headed through the dip in the road where a spring rivulet ran to join the larger stream. Then she urged the mount into a fast walk along the flatter section of road on the other side. The two outriders followed her.