On the first day, Elansa had been forced to walk with her hands bound before her. On the second day, the ropes had been cut. This was at Char's suggestion.
"She's slowing us down, Brand. Either kill her or cut her hands loose."
Brand had looked at the moons, the red and the white like pale ghosts in the afternoon sky. They were five days from full, and he was reckoning time. He looked north, reckoned some more, and told Char to cut her loose.
"Keep that eye of yours on her," he'd said. "Lose her, and I'll kill you."
The dwarf had shrugged, but Elansa didn't think the threat was an idle one.
Now, on this fourth day from Hammer Rock, she woke and lay for a long moment still, trying to find the will to move. In the end, it was not will that helped her to sit. It was the groaning of the muscles in her back and neck, stiff from another night sleeping on stony ground. Sitting, she looked westward to the forest. She saw only a thin dark line sketched on the horizon, like a fading mark on an old, old map. There was Qualinesti, far away.
Here in the stony land, no dawn chorus sparkled, no lifting of birdsong to greet the new day. Here, there was only wind and, for Elansa, hunger and thirst and bruises. She was not always dragged to her feet when she fell. Brand insisted on keeping his hostage in condition to walk, but when he wasn't looking, or when Char wasn't near, Elansa was as often kicked to her feet as dragged. She learned the names of some of the outlaws by hearing their rough voices, talking among themselves about her as though she were a dumb brute.
Kick 'er up, there, Arawn! Dell, drag that useless sack to her feet!
She learned other names that way, walking or stumbling. She heard their voices roughened by drink, by the cold, by the constant grit blowing across the barren land where only rocks and crows and wolves lived.
Ay, Swain! Y'keep lookin' at ’er like you think those skinny elven bones would warm y’up of a night….
Chaser will have the warm of her before you do!
She heard the name Ley applied to the elf. She never heard the whole of his name. He seemed to have little to do with most of them. She'd only seen him speak with Brand and a tall, silver-haired woman whose name was Tianna and who had the look of both elf and human. Sometimes he spoke with Char, but the long silences between them seemed more the dwarf's doing than the elf’s.
Brand's band numbered two dozen, among them all only two were women: dark Dell and bright Tianna. These two harbored no sympathy for the captured woman. Their laughter was as raucous as any man's when Elansa looked around for food or water and got none or little, when she fell and struggled up again….
"Fine, fancy riding boots," Dell said once, looking pointedly at the thin-soled leather boots with the thick heel. "You'd do better, princess, to go barefoot."
Brand and Dell, Tianna, the elf Ley and the dwarf Char, Chaser and Swain and Arawn… these names Elansa learned, for these were often together, perhaps the core of the outlaw band. The names of the other outlaws she didn't know-surly, sullen men who ranged before and behind her, who drifted in and out of the shadows at night. These she knew only as a threat. These were the ones whose eyes looked at her from the darkness when the campfires were low, waiting for her to get up to relieve herself, to walk just far enough outside the light that Char or Brand wouldn't see. Then they followed, one or two or three, like wolves. After the second night, Char sent the hound with her, his long loping Fang, with the curt command, "Keep!"
Elansa looked around her in the chill dawn. The outlaws slept, dark shapes hunched under ragged cloaks. The embers of a campfire glittered nearby, and Brand sat stirring them to life with a burned stick No one else was awake but the watch on the ridge, Char and Tianna pacing. Brand looked up at her and then back to his fire making. Near his hand a cold chunk of meat sat, half a hare, furred in the ash of the fire. Elansa’s stomach rumbled, hungry. She'd not eaten since the morning before. In exhaustion, she'd fallen asleep while a dozen lean hares brought down by slender arrows from Dell's quiver and Ley's still cooked over the fires. No one had waked her, and the several hounds who were Fang’s companions dined in peace, without her hungry eyes on them. Elansa had learned the hierarchy of this brigand band: outlaws ate first, dogs next, the lone captive after. She'd learned to respect it quickly, for to complain was to go without.
She pulled her cloak around her shoulders and rough-combed her hair back from her face. Tangled and dirty, the knots pulled painfully against her fingers. Broken fingernails scraped against her cheek. The princess prepared herself for another day in the outland.
Brand looked at her again, then to Fang who came padding through the camp. He stabbed the hunk of meat with his dagger and jerked his head at the hound. They shared the meat, stripped from the bones, the outlaw wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, the hound's tail wagging in lazy sweeps. Elansa’s throat closed up painfully, tears pricked at her eyes.
Yawning, Brand peeled off one more strip of flesh from the carcass, gave it to Fang, and flipped the bones, stringy meat clinging, to Elansa. The hound watched it tumble in the air, glanced at Brand, then at Elansa. Bones and pitiful remains fell in the dust.
"Go on," Brand said, to the dog or Elansa.
She didn't wait to guess. She took up the bones and gristle, and took what meat she could from the whole. The hound crept closer. She snapped a bone from the carcass and tossed it. While Fang’s attention was elsewhere, she cracked a leg bone and split it for the marrow. This she did awkwardly, not so handy as those who did not eat from silver plates. Marrow, until three days ago, was no more than flavoring for what the cooks in the elf king’s household liked to call a Hunter's Stew. Here, marrow was part of a meal, one she had learned early not to scorn.
All around her, outlaws woke, separating themselves from the earth and their cloaks. Two, Dell and Arawn, separated themselves from each other. Upon the ridge, Char and Tianna looked east toward the sullen dawn. Elansa licked cracked lips, looking where they did. Unyielding gray, the sky hung low, holding out the promise of rain that never came.
Swift and sudden, a hawk's screech ripped across the dawn stillness. Elansa’s heart jumped. Outlaws stopped what they were doing and looked around, searching east. Hounds rose from the dust, stretching. Char and Tianna seemed to have vanished from the ridge. Elansa looked harder and saw them bounding down the thin path away from the height.
Brand snapped Dell's name like an order. The woman grabbed Elansa by the arm and dragged her to her feet. A dagger's gleaming edge pressed against the flesh of Elansa’s neck. "Be still," the woman hissed. Elansa didn't breathe. The hare’s carcass fell from her fingers into the dust, marrow dark in the cracks. The nearness of the delicacy broke Fang’s concentration. The hound snatched the carcass and trotted away to enjoy the last of breakfast.
"Goblins," Char said to Brand, the first to return. "Tianna says about a dozen. I make it maybe less. Ten, likely. No matter the count, we both saw the shine of their weapons. We saw them come in from the west and turn north. Making for Stagger Stream, I’d guess. It’s the nearest trusty water."
Brand heard this in silence, his eyes narrowed. The shine of their weapons, Char had said, and Brand had his hand on his own, the knife always at his belt. He cast a quick glance at his sheathed sword lying near the failing fire, then another swift look over Char's head. "Tianna! Get us going, girl! You and Ley think about east!"
Dell's hand gripped Elansa’s arm tighter. "You're running? Brand, you're running from goblin scum? There's only a dozen, at most. You heard what Char said."