“Stop complaining,” Vika murmured as she continued to wind the binding around his chest, concentrating on what she was doing.
“That’s good,” Rita said, taking the end from Vika once she had used the whole roll. She split the end, then pushed it through several of the layers of bindings and tied the tail so that it couldn’t come undone.
“You are a natural at this,” Rita told Vika. She shook a finger at the Mord-Sith. “I want you to keep an eye on the wound. If he starts to bleed again, unwrap it and put some more of this salve on it, then put a clean cloth over it. After that, wrap him back up. I’m afraid that is all we can do without him taking some time to rest and heal. But we all understand the urgency of going after the Mother Confessor.”
Vika took the tin after Rita checked that there was enough in it before screwing on a lid. “I will. Thank you for helping Lord Rahl. I will watch over him in your place.”
Rita smiled and patted Vika’s cheek. “Good girl.”
“We need those horses,” Richard told Toby.
One of the men pointed a thumb back over his shoulder at the sinking sun. It was hovering over the western wall out to the pass. “It will be dark in a couple of hours, Lord Rahl. Don’t you want to wait until dawn to leave?”
Richard glanced to the pass trail under the setting sun. “If I missed saving the Mother Confessor from that coven of witches by a couple of hours, or a couple of minutes, or even a couple of seconds, I could never forgive myself, and our world would never forgive me.”
The man and those around him acknowledged what Richard said with solemn nods.
Richard intended to ride hard and cover ground as swiftly as possible. There were plenty of horses, more than he had expected, so he told the men that he wanted horses for him and the six Mord-Sith, and an extra for each of them so they could rotate their mounts when the horses got tired.
The crowd outside the stables watched as men led horses out of stalls in a couple of the stable buildings. A pair of men for each horse, to save precious time, helped get the horses saddled and bridles on. While they were doing that, other women and men rushed up with supplies for their journey and tied them to the spare horses. Richard could see men tying bags of oats to the spare horses as well.
“Let’s get going,” Richard told the Mord-Sith once he saw that the horses were ready.
As they all mounted up, Rita stepped forward and put a hand on Vika’s leg. “Watch over him, will you?”
Vika smiled. “Like a mother hen.”
Richard believed her. But he had to admit the support of the binding did seem to make the wound feel better. The aum helped as well.
“Lord Rahl, thank you,” Toby said as he, too, stepped out of the crowd, hat in hand. “We are in your debt.”
“And I in yours.”
“If we can ever be of help, with herbs or anything else, everyone in Bindamoon stands ready to render any assistance we can.”
Richard gave the man a nod of appreciation. “We need to get going. The children of D’Hara need me.”
Without delay, Richard flicked the reins and gave his horse a gentle press with his heels. The horse responded immediately, charging ahead at a swift trot. The Mord-Sith stayed right with him. The extra horses ran behind on long tethers. He ran his horse down the trail road the rest of the way through the town and toward the western wall and its arched opening.
“Lord Rahl,” Vika said as she rode up beside him as they went through the arched tunnel under the wall, “how in the world are we going to find that witch woman, Shota, and her coven?”
“That’s the least of our worries. We simply need to head west.”
“Why west?” Berdine asked.
“Because,” he told them as he looked back over his shoulder, “Shota will be taking Kahlan to Agaden Reach.”
Berdine wrinkled up her nose. “What’s Agaden Reach?”
Richard passed a look among all the faces watching him as they rode. “A very bad place. It’s surrounded by jagged peaks of the Rang’Shada Mountains, like a wreath of thorns, and then a dangerous swamp.”
“Ah,” Berdine said. “Of course it is.”
31
A wintery gust of wind quickly reminded Richard how cold it was outside the town walls. It sent a shiver through his shoulders. He knew that he would soon enough become accustomed to the cold again, but in the meantime it was unpleasant.
He had to read the way ahead by how the snow followed the contour of a slight depression in the ground created by the trail as it wound its way into the snow-crusted trees. Once they were into the thick of the forest, the narrow but open area through the woods more easily revealed the trail. He knew, though, that once they got down out of the mountains, the snow would be gone, it would be warmer, and the path down from the pass behind them would be much more obvious.
The wound in his side hurt with each step the horse took under him. He did his best to ignore the pain. He checked a few times, relieved to find it wasn’t bleeding. Vika watched him checking.
After the sun was down and it grew both darker and colder, Richard glanced over at Vika. “I’m not tired. The moon on the snow provides enough light. I’m going to keep going. I don’t intend to stop unless we’re forced to.” He swept his gaze over the rest of them. “Is that a problem for any of you?”
Vika glanced over at him suspiciously. “You aren’t planning on leaving us behind, are you?”
Richard frowned. “No, of course not.”
Vika shrugged. “Then there is no problem. We are Mord-Sith. We will ride as long as you want to ride. If you get too tired to ride, you can ride on my horse behind me.”
Even though Richard wasn’t in a smiling mood, he smiled briefly at that. “Thanks. I’ll let you know if I need you to carry me.”
“Riding is a bit rough, though,” she said. “You just be sure to let me know if that wound in your side starts bleeding again. If it does, I will need to fix it.”
Richard turned his eyes ahead to the moonlit, snowy trail. “I need to be strong to stop Shota and get Kahlan back, so you just make sure I stay healthy.”
Vika showed him an earnest smile. “By your command, Lord Rahl.”
A few hours later, when Richard departed the trail and took a route leading down through a broad valley, Rikka rode up close to him. “Aydindril is to the north, Lord Rahl. Are you sure they aren’t going to head there to take the Keep in order to be safe from the Glee? Surely even the witches don’t want to tangle with the Glee.”
“No, they’re taking Kahlan west, to Agaden Reach.” He gestured ahead to some of the depressions in the snow. “Those are their tracks joining us now, but they are days old.”
Richard had assumed that they would follow the trail, so he hadn’t taken the time to stop and look for tracks in the dark. He was a bit alarmed to see that their tracks were now intersecting their route. That meant that he hadn’t realized the coven had somehow taken a shortcut up until that point. That would put them even farther ahead than he thought.
“I can’t see any tracks,” Berdine said. “It’s too dark.”
“I can see them well enough,” he told her. “The wind and sun have worn them down over the days they had a head start, but fortunately there hasn’t been more snow to cover them.” He was angry at himself for not looking earlier for their tracks to cut away from the trail to take a shortcut. Even though it was dark, if he had spotted that deviation he would have seen where they had gone. “Even if it does snow, now, this confirms where they are headed. That is what matters.”
For most of the rest of the night, they rode on through the dead quiet, snowy woods. They descended steadily through the mountainous forest and eventually down into the sparsely wooded hill country. As they got lower, tufts of long grass started to appear in open patches of the snow. Richard could see that in the distance, revealed by the pale moonlight, the valley out ahead was clear of snow.