A hot, stinking wind gusted through the narrow, steep-sided valley. Because the only kai in the lair were wounded, they could be held in tighter quarters. The tighter, the better, clan lore said. Perhaps because it was more like the caves to which the dragons would go to heal or die if they were allowed.
We crept past vast pens crammed with goats that surged against the stout fences in waves of bawling terror at every blast of balefire. Beyond the herd pens were a few wooden sheds built up against the cliff walls: a cookshed, a smithy, a storehouse, a granary, a shelter for the women who cooked and served the Riders, and one for the drovers who kept the herd pens filled. A hospice for wounded Riders sat at the far end of the valley, far from the noisy, stinking pens. Lantern lights flickered in several of the buildings, and two slaves were hauling a heavy slops wagon slowly toward the pigsties.
We held up for a moment in the shelter of a wood cart until the wagon had passed. A heavyset man took a piss outside the smithy and then went back inside, shutting off the orange glare flooding out of his door. A short distance beyond our position, a dry, rutted wagon road angled to the right into a narrow cleft in the cliff wall—the main entrance to the lair. The guard posts would be at the far end of it. Unless you were holding hostages, you didn’t need guard posts inside a dragon lair. To our left we could see the first Rider hut, its back to us. It faced the center of the lair where the kai were held captive by the ring of bloodstones. We would either have to cross the open expanse of the road behind the Rider’s hut, or risk the Rider—or a dragon—spotting us as we went on the darker, more dangerous front side of the hut.
I chose the road. A mistake. No sooner had we stepped onto it than a party of horsemen came galloping out of the cleft—on us too quickly for us to dive back into our shelter. Two of them were Riders, very drunk from the sounds of their bawdy singing; two more were other clansmen equally drunk, each with a woman astride behind him. One horse carried two more women—drunk enough or stupid enough that they didn’t know how difficult it was for a drunken Rider to control his inner fire when he was mating. They would likely be dead before morning. The other two horsemen were servants carrying torches. The Riders’ horses reared as the party pulled into a milling knot no more than fifty paces from MacAllister and me, the women laughing and squealing like pigs. The men dismounted and turned the horses over to the servants. I thought we might escape notice in the confusion. But one of the servants lifted his torch high and called out, “Who’s there?”
No time to think. No time to delay. I had to keep them away from us. I pulled out my whip and whirled about to face MacAllister, keeping my back to the Riders’ party. “On your knees,” I said quietly, “and do exactly as I say.” I cracked the whip on either side of him to drown out any protest he might make. Voices carried exceedingly well in a lair. Unfortunately mine was a woman’s voice—entirely inappropriate for one in Rider’s armor. “You must be my voice,” I whispered. “Tell them your name is Ger, and you’ve brought in an injured kai from Gondar and a Senai card cheat from Vallior. Say it like a Rider.”
As I cracked the whip again, raising spouts of dust and dried mud, MacAllister dropped to his knees with a steel-eyed glare. “Stay away!” He screamed out the words I’d told him—remembering to use the old tongue and the very voice of besotted arrogance that would be expected. “I’ll take my pleasure with the Senai vermin undisturbed; then I’ll join you and see what revels can be found in this pitiful excuse for a camp.”
Blast them, I thought. The clansmen stood watching, swilling from bloated wineskins while the women wrapped themselves obscenely around their waists.
“We’re going to have to play it out,” I whispered as I kicked MacAllister sprawling and wrapped a thong of my whip about his wrists.
He screamed out, “Never again, Senai. Never will you think to cheat a clansman of the Ridemark!” Then he struggled to get up, whispering back to me with the slightest edge of anxiety behind his smile, “As long as you don’t get to like this.”
I kicked him again and stuck the point of my rapier under his chin.
“Now what to do with you,” he snarled, then followed with a string of curses that I wouldn’t have imagined he knew. “Something fitting for a Senai donkey.”
I coached him, and he played it well. Sheathing my sword and yanking on the whip, I stretched his hands over his head and dragged him away from the drunken party toward the wood cart. He helped by digging in his feet as if to get up and fight, but would propel himself forward so that it wouldn’t be too obvious that it wasn’t easy for me to drag him. Several times he stumbled onto his back, and I had to drag him on it until he could get purchase with his feet again. I dared show no mercy. When we had covered the distance to the wood cart, he dragged himself slowly to all fours, working to get his breath, while I pulled manacles and chain from my pack and dangled them high in the torchlight. The onlookers laughed and cheered and whistled.
“Ask them if they approve,” I said. “Hurry. Keep them amused, and they won’t get involved.”
“One moment.” He gasped; then he looked up and saw what I held. “Oh, gods ...”
“Say it.”
“So you approve?” he screamed, all the while shaking his head. Then, quietly, “No ... no ... I most certainly do not.”
As the drunkards cheered, I kicked him flat again, stepped on his chest, and loosened the whip enough that I could lock the iron bands about his scarred wrists. “I don’t know any other way,” I said. Then, without looking at his face, I attached the length of chain to the rings bolted to the wood wagon. “We’ll go between them and the Rider’s huts, just like I’m planning to take possession of the empty one. It’s the only way.”
It seemed to take two hours for MacAllister to drag the wood cart the fifteen hundred paces to the deserted Rider hut. The wagon was three-quarters loaded, heavy and cumbersome. Our audience cheered as we passed them by. I saluted with my sword and repeatedly laid the whip as close as I dared to the Senai. Once I grazed him on his cheek, and another time on his shoulder, ripping his tunic and drawing a smothered curse from him. He flinched dutifully with each crack, and I believed there was more truth to his groaning effort than he would care for anyone to know.
Once we were past them, the onlookers seemed to remember their own plans and staggered toward the occupied Rider’s huts, calling out that I should come join them when I’d had enough of my vengeance.
“Tell them to save you a woman,” I told MacAllister.
But he was panting and heaving, and shook his head. “Can’t.”
So instead I raised my sword again and whirled it in circles above my head. I didn’t let him stop until we reached the third hut, and even then I scouted the area thoroughly before I unlocked his bonds.
He bent over, resting his head and arms on the side of the cart. “Thank the Seven, it wasn’t fully loaded,” he said.
“We’ve got to get moving. The Riders and their friends were drunk enough to forget us, but the servants weren’t. They’ll ask about the new arrival.”
“You’re very resourceful and your plan worked, but next time you might warn me.” MacAllister straightened, stretching his shoulders and back, wincing as he rubbed his wrists. “I could at least practice my name-calling.”
Trying to ignore his eyes on me, I took the kai’cet from its case, slipped it into its leather collar, and tied it about my neck so I could have both hands free. Then I pulled on my gauntlets, stowed the manacles and chain in my pouch, and coiled my whip. I didn’t need to see MacAllister’s expression to sense how he was revolted. “If you weren’t such a sniveling fool, you might give our safety a bit more consideration,” I blurted out. “I, for one, have no wish to die, so I don’t walk naked into the most dangerous places in the universe.”