“That’s Desmond’s men!” Stephen shouted. “Or two of them.”
“Mount,” Aspar shouted, leaping onto Ogre and digging in his heels. The big horse jolted into motion. The men split, one headed toward Stephen and one keeping a course toward Aspar.
Aspar stood in his stirrups and turned, sighting down a shaft at the one attacking Stephen. Ogre wasn’t quite settled into a stride, but Aspar couldn’t wait. He released the dart.
The arrow flew true, or almost so, striking the monk in the kidney. He fell, giving Stephen time to get up on Angel, but came back to his feet with absurd speed.
Meanwhile, incredibly, the other monk was gaining on Ogre. Grimacing, Aspar fitted another arrow to his bow and shot it, but just as he did so Ogre leapt a downed log and his shot went high and wide.
Now he was down to two arrows.
He yanked on his reins, spun the horse around, and aimed him right at his pursuer, staring down the shaft at him. He saw the man’s face, set and determined, and as mad as one of the Raver’s berserks. He aimed for the heart.
At the last instant, the monk threw himself aside, so the arrow buried itself in sod. He cut viciously at Ogre’s legs as he tumbled past, but the horse avoided the blow by whiskers. They thundered by, back toward Stephen, whose wounded attacker was nearly on him. He was bleeding freely, but that seemed only to have slowed him a little. Fortunately, he was so intent on the boy that he didn’t notice Ogre until it was too late, until the beast’s forehooves had crushed his skull.
Aspar wheeled again, taking out his last arrow and leaping down from the beast.
“Ogre, qalyast!” he shouted.
Ogre immediately charged the monk, who set himself grimly to meet the horse. In that instant of relative stillness, Aspar shot him in the center of the chest.
The monk spun with the blow, avoiding Ogre as he did so, and ran past the horse toward Aspar. Cursing, Aspar turned and lifted the dead man’s sword. It wasn’t a weapon he knew a lot about—he wished he had his dirk and ax—but he held it at guard and waited. Behind him, he heard Stephen drop to the ground.
The monk was on him, then, cutting fast and hard toward Aspar’s head. Aspar gave ground, but not enough, and had to bring the heavy weapon up to parry. His shoulder jarred as if he’d just stopped thirty stone falling from a tower. Stephen came in from the right, swinging his farm tool, but the swordsman turned and neatly hacked through the wooden shaft. As-par swung clumsily, and the monk danced aside, feinted, and cut. Aspar leapt inside the swing, dropped his own weapon, grabbed the sword arm with his left hand, and punched the monk in the throat. He felt cartilage crush, but his opponent kneed him viciously in the chest, hurling him back and to the ground, empty of breath. The monk staggered forward, lifting his sword, just as Ogre hit him from behind. He fell, and Ogre kept stamping him until his hooves were red and the corpse wasn’t twitching.
“They could have killed us if they’d been a little smarter,” As-par said, when he got his wind back. “They were overconfident. Should have ignored us and gone straight for Ogre.”
“Contemptuous is more like it,” Stephen replied. “Those were two of the pettiest of Spendlove’s bunch—Topan and Aligern. Spendlove himself would never be so stupid.”
“Yah. I maunt he sent the men he could most afford to lose. Even if they’d got only one of us, it would have been a bargain. He should’ve given ’em bows.”
“Those who walk the faneway of Saint Mamres are forbidden to use bows,” Stephen remembered.
“Well. Thank Saint Mamres in your prayers, then.”
They stripped the corpses, and to Aspar’s satisfaction found a fighting dirk not unlike his own lost one. They also found a few silver tierns and enough dried meat and bread for a day, all welcome additions to Aspar and Stephen’s meager possessions.
“I reckon that leaves about six of them,” he mused, “and however many Fend brings. Let’s hope they keep sending them two at a time like this, so we can keep evening the odds.”
“I doubt Spendlove will make the same mistake twice,” Stephen said. “Next time, he’ll be sure.”
“Next time could be anytime. These two might have just been to lull us. We’re riding out of here, right now, and not the way they’ll expect. We know where they’re going, so we don’t need to trail them.”
Once they were mounted, Aspar chuckled.
“What?” Stephen asked.
“I notice you aren’t arguing we bury these, like you did those last.”
“A holter’s burial is good enough for them,” Stephen said.
“Werlic,” Aspar allowed, “at least you’ve learned something.”
3
Plots
“Well, sister Mule,” Serevkis said. “The greencrafting has become much more interesting, hasn’t it?”
Anne glanced up from her examination of the double boiler and the fermenting ewe’s milk it contained. She loved the scent of it, still warm from the sheep, and even more the anticipation of the magic that was soon to occur.
“Why do you still call me that?” she asked absently.
“Wouldn’t you rather be a mule than a little cow?”
Anne smiled. “There’s that,” she admitted. “Yes, green-craft is more interesting now. Everything is.”
“Even numbers?” Serevkis sounded skeptical.
“Yes. If they’d told me from the start that we were studying numbers so we could manage the moneys of our households, I might have paid more attention in the beginning.”
“But greencraft is the most interesting,” Serevkis insisted. “Who knew how many poisons lie right beneath our feet or in garden walls, and requiring only a little alchemy to make them potent.”
“It’s like a lot of things,” Anne said. “Even this cheese I’m making. To know we have the power to change things, to make one thing into another.”
“You and your cheese. Is it doing anything yet?”
“Not yet,” Anne said.
“But you’re right,” Serevkis went on. “To be able to make something harmless into something deadly—it’s wonderful.”
“You’re a wicked girl, Sister Serevkis,” Anne said.
“Who will you kill first, Sister Mule?”
“Hush!” Anne said. “If the mestra or one of the elders hears you talking like that …”
Serevkis yawned and stretched her long limbs. “They won’t,” she said. “The mestra and her favorites went off through the gates four bells ago, and the rest are teaching. No one ever comes to the creamery. Who will you murder in the night?”
“No one comes to mind, except a certain long-necked name-caller.”
“I’m serious.”
Anne met the girl’s casually evil gaze. “Do you have someone in mind?”
“Oh, indeed. Several someones. There’s Dechio—he’d be first. For him it will be the pollen of the witherweed, cooked into a gum with nightshade. I’ll put it in the candles in his room.”
“That’s a slow, cruel death. What did this Dechio ever do to you?”
“He was my first lover.”
“And jilted you?”
“I was ten. He was twenty. He pretended to be my friend and made me drink wine until I couldn’t stand, and then he had his way with me.”
“He raped you?” Anne asked, incredulous.
“There’s the word,” Serevkis said. Her mouth twitched, after.
“And your father? He did not avenge this?”
Serevkis laughed, a bit bitterly. “What use to a father a daughter so early despoiled? No, it would have been better to leap to my death from the moat tower than tell my father what Dechio did that day, and continued to do until I grew too old to attract him.”
“I see.” Anne didn’t see, though. She couldn’t imagine. “May I make a suggestion?”
“Certainly.”