Nobody actually stopped to loot either, not even the gear on the dead and living horses. All the arms and armor, all the packs that belonged to the dead men, it's all still here. Just the girls and their packhorse, that's all that were taken, and I have to wonder if the packhorse wasn't grabbed just because they didn't want to take the time to unload the girls' stuff off him. If we hadn't had Need, nobody would have known this happened until some trader or farmer stumbled over the bodies -- and even then, no one would know that the girls were missing. Until Tilden came looking for them, that is.
"Where now?" she asked Kethry.
"South and west," she replied immediately. "More west than south."
Well, that certainly corresponded with those telltale blood trails.
Tarma sucked on her lower lip, and glanced up at the sky to the west. Behind the gray pall of clouds, the sun shone feebly, no more than a finger's-breadth above the horizon. The air was sharply cold, too cold for snow at this point, so for a while they could follow the clear trail left by the kidnappers. It would be dark soon -- and no time to act on her hunch that the kidnappers were about to drive straight south. At least, not in time to cut them off.
"Stay on the pillion, Furball," she told a weary Warrl behind her. "I'll track them as long as I can see, then you take over until we can't ride anymore."
But just as twilight faded, that became easier to do, for the tracks of the running horses in the unbroken snow were joined by the tracks of wheels. Warrl raised his nose for a quick investigation, as Tarma read the churned-up snow. The blood-trails ended where the wheel marks began, so the kidnappers had paused long enough to rough-bandage their wounds.
:New men, here. They waited for some time while the others created their ambush and sprung it.:
"So they had a wagon ready and waiting, and that's where they put the girls." She gritted her teeth. "Smart. You keep them completely under control and you don't have to worry about someone accidentally seeing them. Hard to explain a little girl trussed up like a chicken for the pot, but no one is likely to be curious about a prison-wagon. I wish to hell I knew who these people were! It would tell me a lot about why they've done this and what they want."
"Surely ransom," Kethry ventured, but Tarma shook her head.
"Not necessarily, she'enedra. This could be political, an attempt to force Tilden into a position he wouldn't otherwise take by holding his girls." She used a little mental discipline to keep herself calm so that she could think properly, as her battlemare responded to her unease by shifting her weight and looking around for the danger. "It could be political in another way, to make an example out of the girls, to show how ruthless these people can be. Hellfires, if there are still any of Char's old allies around, I'd count on them to be that ruthless. It could be religious; the Triune Goddess Priests have been getting their noses out of joint since there isn't an official state religion anymore."
"It doesn't even have to have anything to do with Rethwellan," came the small, uncertain voice from behind her. As she turned to peer at Jadrie through the gloom, the girl swallowed but looked straight into Tarma's eyes and bravely continued her thought. "Merili is supposed to marry the Prince of Jkatha. And the kidnappers are going south. Maybe someone wants to force Queen Sursha to do something to get Meri back safe. You know she'd have to do something, especially if it's Jkathans that took Meri and Kira."
"Damn. Out of the mouths of babes. Good thinking, kitten." And maybe I ought to be grateful that she's along.... Tarma shook her head, then tried to visualize where they were on a map. With a sinking feeling, she realized that if the kidnappers continued southward, they would quickly strike a major trade route, and the odds were high that they would be able to muddle or hide their trail there in the tracks of ongoing traffic.
Which meant that the odds were high that they would strike straight south soon. Going across country to try at least to catch up was a better plan than it had seemed a few moments ago.
Plots on plots -- what if someone wants the boy to marry his girl? Getting Tilden to forbid the marriage in order to get the girls back would do that, and Sursha doesn't even have to enter into it. What if they want to make a political incident out of this, between Jkatha and Rethwellan? Making it look as if Sursha is behind it could easily do that. The trouble is -- the trouble is -- a lot of these plots end in murders.
"Warrl, we need you now," she told the kyree, and with a groan, he jumped down off the pillion-pad behind her into the ankle-deep snow. "We'll keep going as long as we can, then we'll stop for a rest and start as soon as there's light."
"Footing?" Jadrie said hesitantly. "For the horses? Shouldn't we have some light?"
Tarma followed in Warrl's wake before she answered, but this was practical knowledge for Jadrie. "If we didn't have Warrl, or if he was fresh, or if we were on anything but Shin'a'in horses, I would agree. Warrl is too tired to make more than a walk," she pointed out. "At that pace, we let the horses feel their own way. I don't want to advertise our presence with a light -- in conditions like this, you could see a light for leagues. Plus if the kidnappers have a mage, he might be able to sense a mage-light."
There was no more comment from Jadrie, so Tarma put the child out of her mind, and let Warrl lead them all onward, as the horses placed their hooves with deliberate care.
At this point, she wasn't anything more than a passenger; she folded her arms and rucked her hands into her belt, let her head sag, and dozed. If the damned sword wasn't making life too difficult for Kethry, she knew her partner was doing the same. Catch sleep whenever you can. The mares and Warrl would warn of danger long before it was visible, and they were too far behind the kidnappers for there to be any likelihood of stumbling into their camp. Of course Jadrie wasn't going to nap, and shouldn't, because she didn't have a battlemare, only a Shin'a'in-bred saddlemare. But Jadrie also had two advantages over her elders -- the first, that she wasn't expected to fight or track later and didn't need the extra sleep, and the second that she was decades younger than either Tarma or her mother and could go longer on less rest.
The horses plodded on into the thick darkness, as Tarma roused herself roughly every candlemark or so to check their bearings by Kethry and Need. As she had expected, some time within the first candlemark after darkness fell, the kidnappers turned south, and were probably on the trade road into Jkatha right at that moment. Probably camped. I hope the girls are all right, at least for now. It was some comfort to know that they were in a wagon, probably locked in there, and that the people who'd taken them were trained and disciplined. If all they were was terrified -- well, they could get over simple terror. There were other things that could happen to little girls that were harder to get over.
Including being murdered.
It was just after midnight that Warrl stumbled over a snow-covered branch, and admitted, :I'm done in, mindmate. We have to rest now. The track still says nothing has happened to the girls, and I can't go any further.:
Both mares stopped when Warrl did, and Jadrie's horse only went another pace or two further than that. "Right. We're stopping, Keth," Tarma called.
Kethry grunted a vague reply, and shook herself awake. As she and Tarma slid stiffly out of their saddles, Kethry kindled a very dim mage-light and Tarma looked around for a suitable campsite. There wasn't much, out here in an area of rolling hills mostly covered with scrub and very rough grasses, but a half-circle of snow-covered bushes gave a certain amount of protection from wind and watchers. She got Jadrie to help set up the tiny tent, and Kethry got out grain for the horses and took over the three packs and extinguished the light. Then, while Kethry laid blankets down on the floor and tucked their packs inside for safekeeping, Jadrie and Tarma unsaddled the horses, rubbed them down, and gave them their rations. She didn't need to hobble the battlemares, for they wouldn't wander, and to keep Jadrie's mare from strolling off, she simply fastened her halter to Ironheart's.