“Ah…” Pen’s conscience prodded him. If he could only ride a little farther anyway… “Do you want this one, to take back as well?”
The groom grinned. “Naw. Let the army enjoy him.”
They each hastened on, in opposite directions.
Indeed, after about a mile of scrambling over slippery scree, footing more suitable to a donkey than to a tired, nervy horse, the trail gave way to outright climbs over stair-like stones, narrowing to a scrubby defile. To Pen’s relief, he saw a flash of movement above: a pair of figures, one in a green cloak.
To his dismay, as he turned to look back down the valley before dismounting, he could just make out a troop of mounted soldiers, trotting relentlessly single file. He counted—yes, the whole thirteen. A flicker of white confirmed that Velka had brought his sorcerer. Pen sucked breath through his teeth. The horse, its head hanging in weariness, made one last halfhearted attempt to bite him as he dragged out his belongings from the saddlebags, unbridled it, and turned it loose.
He hoisted his burdens and began clambering up the slope. In a few minutes, Nikys glanced back, spotted him, and touched her brother’s sleeve. After a brief debate, they sat on boulders to await his arrival. They both looked nearly spent, but equally determined. Arisaydia still had the sword, naturally.
Penric heaved his way up to them, brandishing the sack. “You forgot your food,” he wheezed. “Among other things.”
Arisaydia glowered, but Nikys looked tentatively delighted, saying, “After Adelis—after we left you in Skirose, we thought you would certainly go back to Adria. You decided to join with us after all?”
Her smile at him, Pen decided, made up for that vile horse, if not quite for her brother. Not much question whose idea Pen’s abandonment had been. “Not exactly. But Velka and a troop arrived in town barely an hour after you’d left. By coach, just as you predicted.” He allowed Arisaydia a conceding nod, not received with any discernable gratitude. “They’re only a few miles behind us right now.”
Nikys’s breath drew in. Arisaydia’s expression turned a much cooler shade of grim.
By silent, mutual consent, they shelved their differences for later in the face of this news. Arisaydia surveyed the landscape, ending by looking up toward the narrowing defile. “Then we keep climbing. There might be a cave.”
“To hide in? He brought his own sorcerer. So maybe not,” Pen cautioned.
“Huh.” At least Arisaydia took in the warning without argument. “I admit, I don’t like putting myself in a bottle.”
“Neither do I,” Pen agreed, heartfelt.
“Climb, then.”
They did so. It took nearly all their breath, but Arisaydia spared what he could to ask after the numbers and condition of their pursuers, seeming peeved that Pen had no more detailed inventory of their arms.
“You took down, what, seven at the villa? That would leave six for me. It may be better to turn and face them here than letting them catch us later, at a worse vantage, even tireder, in the darkness.”
Pen didn’t care for Arisaydia’s arithmetic. Alone, he thought he might be able to bolt up the hill, turn and dodge, climb, vanish. Run away. But not the three of us. And so the tactician prevails. In a sense. He observed, voice flat in his concession, “Velka’s Temple-man is going to tie up a lot of my attention, once we get within range of each other. This isn’t going to be the kind of fight you think.”
Arisaydia’s red eyes narrowed. “Can you take him?”
“I… won’t know till I see what he brings to the table. We won’t exactly be trying to kill each other. Jumping demon problem, there.” Among other theological concerns. Bastard’s teeth, what a mess.
At last Arisaydia stopped, glanced around, and said, “Here. We won’t do better.”
Pen copied his inspection. The steepest part of the trail zig-zagged down behind them, giving them a height advantage not unlike being atop a rampart. The scrubby slopes to either side allowed no cover for a man to advance and circle them in secret. The defile ahead might not be a good place to be pressed into if anyone did manage to get above them, but it wasn’t entirely out of the range of some rabbit-sprint retreat.
Reminding Pen a bit of the prudent sergeant, Arisaydia had them all sit down and share out bites of food from Pen’s sack, and mouthfuls of water from the leather bottle he carried, and when had he acquired it? He glanced at Pen’s case. “You dragged that all this way?”
“Its contents were expensive, and would be hard to replace. Good steel needles and scissors and scalpels. Clean gauze, the remains of my ointments… had some trouble getting them compounded correctly, you know.”
Nikys eyed it, and him. “I’d have thought you’d be glad to leave it behind.”
Yes, no, I don’t know, maybe sorry later… “Frugality is a hard habit to break.”
Looking thoughtful, Nikys bestirred herself and began gathering up a pile of throwing rocks. Adelis blinked, then went to assist her. Penric wished wanly for his good hunting bow, back in Adria, but joined the foragers.
He stopped when the first of Velka’s party, their horses slipping and snorting, cleared the last ridable turn below, looked up, and saw them. Shouts, excitement, bustling back and forth as the ten men and the sergeant dismounted, secured the horses, arrayed themselves and waited. Four of them were archers, Pen saw, even now stringing their short bows and looking up warily, awaiting orders. All their quivers bristled with arrows.
“That’s going to be a problem,” sighed Arisaydia, watching them.
“Not really,” murmured Pen. Nikys glanced at him sidelong and picked up a rock, turning it in her hands. She, too, seemed to be waiting for orders.
“Now I’m sorry you were drawn into our disaster,” she said quietly to Pen.
“Wasn’t you who did it. And I mean to share that regret around, if I can.”
Her little smile reminded him of that scary smirk of her brother’s. “Good.”
They were just out of bowshot, at least for men shooting uphill. The archers were also out of range for Pen’s sorcery, certainly of the finely tuned variety he hoped to use. Landslides remained an option, although there wasn’t a great deal of scree poised in just the right places.
More debate below among Velka, the sergeant, and the sorcerer. Then the man in the white robes turned, seemed to steel himself, and began climbing the jagged trail with the aid of a stout staff.
He looked everything a Temple sorcerer and learned divine should be. Tall, grave, mature, powerful, his beard trimmed neatly around his face, though he could have stood to take the scissors to his eyebrows as well; black eyes glared up from their bristling shadows. Both Arisaydia and Nikys stared down in muted alarm.
“This one’s my part, I guess,” sighed Pen, without enthusiasm. Des, are we ready?
Ooh, she cooed, what a cute little baby demon!
What?
The lad with the beard as well, but his demon is just a youth. Only two animals before him, and this is its first human incarnation. All it will know is what he knows.
“Bastard be praised,” breathed Pen, and tapped his lips twice with his thumb. Then twice again, because everyone here was going to need His luck to get through the next minutes alive. He stepped out a few paces from where his companions crouched, and let the approaching man get puffed closing their mutual range. He wondered what he looked like in turn. A tired, skinny, sunburned young man with hair escaping its knot—he blew a strand out of his mouth—wearing an odd assortment of castoffs, sweaty tunic, green jacket, mismatched riding trousers all over horse. Long feet unhappy from his hike in these falling-apart sandals, and he had to get some good boots soon.