And that wasn’t the only reason Mahknash wanted them. Delferahk had suffered enough at Charisian hands without accepting the insult of an attack on the king’s very castle! Not enough to massacre the Royal Guards who’d thought they were there to protect Prince Daivyn, the treacherous sons-of-bitches had actually blown up two-thirds of the castle and set fire to the rest! King Zhames had taken Prince Hektor’s orphans in out of the goodness of his heart and a kinsman’s love, and his reward was to have his armsmen slaughtered and his home itself destroyed? No, that couldn’t be allowed to stand, and it wouldn’t. Not with the pursuit so close upon them.
And the bastards don’t know their ride isn’t coming, either, he thought with grim satisfaction.
The discovery that the fugitives were headed for the Sarm Valley, where the West Sarm flowed through the gap between the Trevor Hills and the Sarman Mountains proper, had made sudden sense out of the mysterious boats which had clashed with a troop of Earl Charlz’ dragoons two days ago. Clearly this plot had been organized far in advance, with plenty of forethought, but that didn’t mean it was going to work. Especially not when the boats they were counting on to rescue them had turned back the day before yesterday.
Mahknash smiled in satisfaction. The dragoons had suffered heavy casualties, but the Charisians had been even more badly hurt. Their boats had been observed headed back downriver, heaped with wounded, running with their tails between their legs. Moving with the current, they’d easily outdistanced any pursuit, unfortunately, and it wasn’t like there were any warships or galleys on the river between them and Sarmouth, so their escape was virtually certain. But they’d managed it only by cravenly abandoning the people they’d come to meet.
Still, what more could you expect out of heretics and blasphemers? Out of people who cut children’s throats as blood sacrifices to Shan-wei? Mahknash had read every word of the confessions the Inquisition had wrung out of the Charisians the Earl of Thirsk had handed over for their rightful punishment, and he’d been horrified by their crimes and perversions, but not surprised. After all, Delferahk knew what Charisians were like. In fact, Delferahk knew better than anyone else, given what the bastards had done to Ferayd!
I wonder if they’ve got any sort of fallback plan? he mused. I don’t know where they expected to meet those boats, but assuming they manage to get past the patrols-Ha! As if that were going to happen!-they’re bound to realize eventually that they’ve been left high and dry. So what do they do then? Try to head cross-country all the way down to Sarmouth on horseback? Fat chance! We’d be on them in Sergeant Mahknash’s thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of a forty-five caliber bullet launched from one of the first two cap-and-ball revolvers ever manufactured on the planet of Safehold. It struck him squarely at the base of the throat at approximately eleven hundred feet per second, driven by sixty grains of black powder, and blew out the back of his neck, knocking him back across his horse’s rump. He hung there for a moment, then thumped heavily to the ground, and his companions shouted in confusion as more gunfire rang out through the darkened mountain woods.
There had to be at least a dozen attackers. Obviously the collision had been as unexpected for them as for Sergeant Mahknash’s patrol. The shots came in rapid succession, but they’d have come in a single, concentrated volley if the traitors had realized they were about to run into the pursuit.
Three more of Mahknash’s troopers were hurled off their horses, and a fourth swayed, wounded but sticking to his saddle, and they heard voices shouting to one another in alarm. Then they heard the thunder of hooves as the fugitives turned, spurring their weary horses away from the patrol.
“Nyxyn, see to the wounded!” Corporal Walthar Zhud shouted, reasserting command. “Zhoshua, you’re on courier! Get your ass back to the Colonel! Tell him we’re in contact and pursuing to the northwest. It looks to me like they’re breaking back the way they came!”
“On my way, Corp!” Private Zhosua responded as he wheeled his horse around and slapped his spurs home.
“The rest of you-after me!”
“Mite showy, My Lord,” Tobys Raimair said judiciously, watching the lurid stab of pistol fire on the far side of the valley.
“Perhaps a little, ” Coris allowed, holding one hand out palm down and waggling it from side to side. “Effective, though.”
“Wonder how many he winged this time?” Raimair said. “I mean, shooting from a horse-critter has to be spooked, what with guns going off in its ear for the first time-and in the dark, and all, with no lanterns. Has to be less accurate than he was back at the Palace, wouldn’t you say, My Lord?”
“I’m not prepared to wager against the seijin under any circumstances, Tobys,” Coris replied dryly.
“Will you two stop it?!” Irys demanded. “They’re probably chasing him over there right this minute!”
“Well, of course they are, Your Highness,” Raimair acknowledged, turning in the saddle to face her. “Whole point of the exercise.”
“But what if he was wrong about being able to sneak away from them?” Daivyn demanded, his voice tight with anxiety, and Raimair reached out and ruffled the boy’s hair with his hand.
“You ever hear the story about the hunting hound that caught the slash lizard, Your Highness?” he asked. The prince looked up at him without speaking for a second or two, then nodded slowly, and the sergeant shrugged. “Well, there’s your answer. I’m sure they’re doing their damnedest-pardon my language, Your Highness,” he apologized to Irys, “to catch up with him this very minute. And if they’re dead unlucky, they will.”
“We’ve got them now, Sir!”
“You think so?” Colonel Aiphraim Tahlyvyr looked up from the map to arch one eyebrow at his aide. The young man was holding the bull’s-eye lantern so the colonel could see the map, and he looked astounded by his superior’s question.
“Well… yes, Sir,” he said after a moment. “Don’t you?”
“I think we’ve got an excellent chance to catch up with them now,” Tahlyvyr replied. “On the other hand, we ought to have caught them well before now. Traitors or not, and heretics or not, this is an elusive fish, Brahndyn. I’m not going to count it as caught until I’ve netted it and got it in the boat.”
Lieutenant Maigowhyn nodded. His colonel’s passion for fishing was something he’d never understood, but the metaphor made sense, anyway.
“The thing I’m wondering,” Tahlyvyr said meditatively, tapping himself on the chin while he thought, “is whether all that gunfire was really a surprise reaction.”
“I beg your pardon, Sir?”
“Well, whether running into our patrol was a surprise or not, it was pretty spectacular, wasn’t it? Would you care to bet a silver that every single picket and patrol out there isn’t headed in the same direction right now? If you were leading one of those patrols, wouldn’t you have headed straight for the gunfire?”
“Of course, Sir!”
“Spoken like a good officer in training, Brahndyn. ‘Ride to the sound of the guns’-that’s what we teach you. And it’s usually the right thing to do, too. But suppose it wasn’t really all gunfire to begin with? Remember, these bastards blew up a sizable chunk of King Zhames’ palace, according to the wyvern messages. What if they brought along a supply of firecrackers? One man with three or four of those double-barreled ‘pistols’ the Charisians seem so fond of and a couple of dozen firecrackers to go off in the underbrush, and all of a sudden every man we’ve got scattered around the hills is haring off like slash lizards that smell blood. And meanwhile-?”