He tried for the stallion’s head and the horse struck him, he was down under its hooves, rolled free beneath the fence as the stallion lunged at him screaming with fury. Ram gasped as AgWurt drew his steel blade and came out under the bars crouched, stalking the winged horse of Eresu, meaning to kill; and then Telien was there snatching away a soldier’s lantern, facing AgWurt. The man swung around, his raised blade close to her, and she flung the lantern, splashing oil across him. Fire caught at once. AgWurt screamed, aflame. Soldiers threw him to the ground, stifling flame with their own bodies.
AgWurt rose at last, limping, white with fury. He advanced on Telien coldly, slowly. She stood her ground, staring at him, Ram could not tell whether in rage or in terror. Ram’s hands were bleeding from fighting the walls of his pen. AgWurt would kill her. He clutched the wolf bell in a desperate bid for power; but the dark Seers held him immobile, emasculated of all Seer’s power. It was then the winged stallion spun, struck AgWurt full in the face, struck again, felling AgWurt, towered over his fallen body pounding with hooves like steel, tearing him, screaming, his rage like the sky breaking open.
The soldiers had fallen back. One raised a bow. The stallion spun again and sent him sprawling. Several men dropped their swords and ran. AgWurt lay crushed beneath the stallion’s hooves, and the great horse loomed over him still, challenging soldiers, and then reared over Telien; and the soldier who held her loosed her and fled.
Now the stallion stood quietly beside Telien. She leaned for a moment against his shoulder, trembling. Then she turned to where her father lay.
AgWurt’s arm was bent beneath him, his body bloody and crushed. Telien knelt, her face twisted. Would she weep for her father now? Ram watched her steadily.
Slowly she turned AgWurt’s bloody body and pulled his arm from beneath him. She glanced up at Ram, removed the iron bracelet from the bleeding wrist, and let Agwurt’s hand drop.
She saw the lump under his tunic then, paused, then drew out the small leather pouch and pulled it open, spilling starfires into her palm, catching her breath. She looked up at Ram, this time with wonder, tipped the starfires back into the bag, and dropped the bag into her pocket. Then she rose without another glance at AgWurt.
She unlocked Ram’s pen first, then the mare’s. When she had removed the saddle, the mare nudged her gently, then broke away at once in a lame gallop up through the camp and out toward the dark mountains. The stallion remained facing the soldiers with flaring nostrils, his ears flat to his head. No man dared move before him. As Ram and Telien started toward the pens of the captives, one soldier tried to draw bow, and the stallion struck him down. He did not move again.
They released the prisoners. Men flocked to catch and saddle horses, to pack the food stores, to take up weapons. Telien found herbs and bandages for those who must be tended. Children too small to ride by themselves would ride before their elders; the sick and the injured would have the one wagon. A dozen men guarded AgWurt’s soldiers. The stallion had gone now, leaping into the sky to follow his mare and guard her, she who went helplessly earthbound through the night mountains heavy with foal and unable to fly to safety; for though the great wolves were her friends, the common wolves of the mountains were not, the common wolves would take pleasure in her flesh.
When Ram turned to looking for Anchorstar, he was gone. No one had seen him. The dun stallion was gone, Anchorstar’s saddle, every sign of him. Telien could not remember when she had last seen that white head among the prisoners, seen the dun stallion. When she reached into her pocket to draw out the little pouch of starfires, it too was gone; one stone gleamed with eerie light in her palm. She raised her eyes to Ram. “How could that be? How—who is he, Ram?”
“I don’t know. Nor do I know from where he came except—except I’m beginning to imagine he came from a distance farther than any place we know.”
“Then will we not see him again? He—I trusted him, Ram. He was—I thought he was very special.”
“Special? Yes, very special. With talents I have not mastered, Telien. But, see him again? I don’t know.” He looked down at her and a shiver touched him, of cold terrible wonder. If either of them were to see Anchorstar again, where would they see him? In what time would they see him? If Telien were to see him—he touched her hair and felt again that heart-rending fear for her.
When at last the prisoners were mounted, Telien kept herself apart from them, pulled her pony aside and held back to Ram. He touched her pack, tied behind the saddle. “You carry food, Telien. But there is food in plenty in the wagon. And this pony . . .”
“He is a sturdy pony for the mountains, Ram. I do not follow the rest.”
His heart lifted. “Do you mean you ride with me, then, into the valley of Eresu?”
“No, Ramad. You go where you are needed, and I must do the same. The mare will need me. She will need salves until her wings are healed, care the stallion cannot give her. She will need, very soon now, tending while she bear her foal, which no stallion, no matter how wise, can give her. I will follow Meheegan into the mountains.”
He took her hand, held the lantern up. “Still you do not remember the thunder, the shaking earth.”
“I remember nothing such as that. How can I remember something that has not happened to me?” Her eyes were huge, very green. “I’ll tell you this, Ramad of wolves. If that memory has to do with you, if it is something we should remember together, then I promise you I would never forget it.”
Ram reached to touch her cheek, said without understanding his own words until after he had spoken them, “If you do not remember, Telien, then—then that which I remember has . . . not yet happened to you.”
They stared at each other perplexed, and Ram went cold with the knowledge of what he had said. Time, for Telien, was yet to warp. The sense of her being swept away from him in Time was yet to happen. Yes, all of it, waiting for her somewhere in Time itself, as a crouching animal waits. What would happen to her after those few moments in Tala-charen? What would the warping of Time do to her then? He could not let her go, could not part from her now, knowing not when she would be swept away; when or if he would see her again.
She saw his fear for her and could not ask, saw that he would have her stay. She leaned and kissed him. “I—I will be in the mountains when—when you come to me.” There were tears on her cheeks. She swung her horse around suddenly and broke it into a gallop up through the muddy camp in the direction the mare had gone.
He turned, grabbed the reins of a saddled horse, had his foot in the stirrup when he stopped himself, stood staring after her with a new feeling, a feeling he would not have for another.
He had no right to stop her because of his fear for her, because of his own need for her. She must do what was necessary. But part of him was with her, would always be with her. He tied the horse, turned away desolate, turned to getting the captives started on their journey home.
He chose three men to ride south to intercept Jerthon. The rest of the band set out at once straight for Blackcob. Ere’s two moons had lifted free of cloud at last, to hang like slim scythes. With their light, the band would make good time. Two men remained in Kubal to meet the small band from the north and to dish out gruel to the penned prisoners, the soldiers of AgWurt. Once the two had left, releasing the prisoners, not a horse would remain in Kubal, not a weapon save one or two for hunting meat.
At last Ram headed out north, up toward the source of the river Urobb, for there, so the old tales told, so inscriptions in the caves of the gods told, he would find Eresu.