“Look,” said Ayensha, pointing. The lights stood still, bright and sharp. The Knights had returned to the Hare and Hound, unable to find their quarry on the road. Small in the night, the tavern’s windows showed as orange gleams. “We have to put distance between us and them.”
Panting, Kerian said, “Why? They don’t dare follow us. Their horses won’t be able to take this slope in the dark.”
“No,” said Ayensha, leaning against a tree. She wrapped her arms loosely around her middle. Sweat ran on her face, plastered her hair to her forehead, her neck and cheeks.
More than sweat, Kerian thought. Silver tears traced through the dirt and blood and bruises on Ayensha’s face. She seemed unaware of that.
Like fire, the woman’s eyes shone fierce and desperate. She shoved away from the tree. “Let’s go.”
Kerian hated the darkness as though it were her enemy. She hated it with each step she took, despised it each time she fell, each time she staggered up again. A woman of the city, she was used to kinder nights and darkness tamed by hot, high, warming fires on streets outside the taverns, the cheerful flames of torchbearers leading a lord or lady’s litter through the streets, the glow from windows of houses high and humble. Here night was complete, blinding.
Ayensha was not troubled. Kerian began to think the woman had the eyes of a cat. Night-eyes, the Wilder Elves called that. Kerian herself used to have the same skill, a long time ago in Ergoth. She fell again, this time so hard the breath left her lungs in a loud whoosh. Fiery pain shot up her right arm, blood sprang from the knife wound again.
“Up,” Ayensha ordered between clenched teeth.
Kerian rose, and they traveled on. When she stumbled, she righted herself. When she hurt, she closed her lips tight to cage the groan. Once she fell and did not rise quickly, and saw Ayensha watching. In the woman’s eyes, pity.
“Come on, you’ve got to keep going,” she insisted.
Kerian followed Ayensha, running, falling, and climbing up again till all the night became an aching repetition of pain and anger and finally the simple numbness of exhaustion. It was then, with surprise, that she saw a glint of silver through the tops of the trees, a small shining. Her weary mind could not think what that shining was or imagine the cause.
“The moon,” Ayensha whispered. She turned her face to the silver, her bruises and cuts showing black in the stark light. “Ah, gods, wherever you are, thank you.”
Kerian watched the half-moon rise, and she watched the world around appear as though by magic. They had come far, and indeed, high. Around them now was more stone than tree, and the stones soared past her height. Some stood so close together they formed little shelters. Against one of these boulders, Ayensha leaned, but very carefully. The woman’s face shone white as bone in the moonlight, her lips pressed into a thin line against pain.
“Sit,” Kerian said, by habit still whispering.
Ayensha looked around, numbly. Kerian took her arm and helped her to a seat on a broad flat stone, helped her put her back to another. Sighing, the woman leaned her head against title rock and closed her eyes.
Listening to the weary rhythm of her heart beating, Kerian pressed her own back against a tall broad pine, the tangy scent of sap filling her, tickling awake old memories of the dark upland forest of Ergoth. Her breath staggered in her lungs, hitching. Muscles of her arms and legs twitched with exhaustion.
“Ayensha, where are we headed?”
Eyes still closed, Ayensha said, “Nowhere. Not now. We’re finished running for the night.” She took a careful breath and pushed away from the boulder. “We hide here, in the rocks, till morning, then see how things are and go on when we can.”
An owl cried, not the mournful hooting reported in minstrel’s songs and poet’s verse, but the startling, rattling cackle of a raptor hunting. Wide-winged, the owl swooped out of a nearby pine, tail spread as it sailed low. Behind her, Kerian heard the sudden dash of something small through the brush, then a high, despairing scream. The owl rose, a rabbit caught in its talons, the corpse swinging. The sight caught Kerian hard by the throat.
“Come on,” Ayensha said. It seemed she hadn’t marked the small death at all She pushed up from her seat, looked around, and pointed to a stand of three tall boulders. “There. Help me.”
Kerian put Ayensha’s arm around her shoulders. Though they did not walk more than a dozen yards, to Kerian it felt like miles the distance growing with the weight on her shoulders. The two tallest boulders leaned together, their tops almost touching, the gap between an entrance like a doorway without a door. It seemed wide enough for two to pass through. Kerian shifted Ayensha’s weight and started through. She had not taken two steps before the woman hissed, “Stop!”
Startled, Kerian did stop, looking at her companion. Again, she saw pity in the woman’s eyes.
From between clenched teeth, Ayensha said, “Check inside. There could be a fox denning there or a lynx or bear.” She pulled away from Kerian and balanced with her hand against one of the tall stones.
Kerian didn’t think any of those things were true, but she put her hand to the knife at her belt—the knife slipped to her by the unpleasant dwarf, she suddenly remembered, wondering briefly what happened to him and his two companions in all the commotion—cold fingers gripping the bone handle as she slipped the weapon from the sheath.
“Wait here,” Kerian said, firmly as though the idea of looking were her own. She snatched up a handful of stones from the ground and pitched in one, then another. She stopped to listen, heard only the wind, and tossed in a third.
They peered into the darkness, the little cave smelling of ancient leaves and ancient earth. Faint and far, moonlight drifted through the cracks between the leaning stones, not sharp beams but a pale diffusion. Kerian took a moment to let her eyes adjust, then helped Ayensha to sit. She went outside, by moonlight found fallen boughs of fragrant pine to make a soft bed, and helped Ayensha to lie down. So weary was the woman now, so filled with pain, that she could not speak to say whether that helped her or to agree that it was good to be out of the wind or to say whether she felt a little warmer. She lay in silence, hunched over in pain. Once her breath caught in a small sob.
Kerian sat silent, her right arm throbbing, her hand on Ayensha’s shoulder. In the quiet, she heard wind, again the cackle of a hunting owl, again the sudden scream of a rabbit’s death. Shuddering, she held her breath and listened more closely to the night. As her heart quieted, she heard what he had hoped for—the faint, musical trickle of water sliding down stone.
“Ayensha,” she whispered.
Ayensha groaned.
“Lie still, I’ll be right back.”
Kerian found water behind the little shelter, a trickle shining with the light of the half-moon, like silver running.
She washed her wound clean of blood, washed her hands and dried them on her shirt. She had only her cupped hands to carry the water, icy and tasting like stone. Still, with two trips, she managed to soothe Ayensha’s thirst. She checked the woman’s injuries and knew at least one of her ribs was broken, maybe more. She could only hope that organs had not been damaged. Across Ayensha’s ribs Kerian saw the distinct print, in black bruising, of a hard boot’s heel.
“Brutes,” she muttered, helping Ayensha to lay straight.
“Worse,” Ayensha whispered, “and I’m glad you killed that bastard Barg.”
Yes, I killed him, thought Kerian, shocked that she had done it so easily and now felt so little regret.
Ayensha didn’t say more. She closed her eyes, and in the instant of closing, fell asleep.
A long time Kerian sat beside the sleeping woman. It seemed to her, there in the misty moonlight and the cold little cave, that she’d been gone from Qualinost for weeks. All her muscles turned to water from weariness.
I will never be able to go home again.
She had killed a Knight, and here in this cave she still smelled his blood on her hands, warm and spilling over the bone handle of the dwarf’s knife.