“Look,” said Ander again. “Damn Knights. They ride through as if they own the place.”
Kenan nodded. Behind her, Jeratt slipped out of the deeper gloom. “Three of them ugly draconians ahead on the Qualinost Road,” he said. “Waitin’.”
Kerian pointed to the Knights. Jeratt grunted. ›
“Tidy little package,” he said.
Ander nodded. “Two Knights and an elf who’ll flee or join in our side.”
“Can’t count on him not siding with the Knights.”
The Knights came closer. Now Kerian heard the deep thud of hoofs on the road, human voices speaking roughly in Common. The cartwheels creaked, the mule snorted and pulled a little at the reins when the wheels hit a rut. The cart’s burden sang, steel chiming faintly against steel.
“A cowardly elf and two Knights,” Ander said stubbornly. “We could take them.” Ander glanced from one to the other, in his eyes an eager light.
“Now easy, boy,” Jeratt said. He glanced past Ander to Kerian. “Listen.”
“For what?”
Jeratt pulled a predator’s grin. “For me to tell you when to go.”
Sunlight and shadow swam on the road. The willows hung so close to the ground their boughs brushed the earth. Horses snorted, a Knight cursed and looked back over his shoulder at the elf and the cart. The driver slapped the reins hard against the mule’s rump, but the cart didn’t move. The mule spread its forelegs and lowered its head.
Ah, Kerian thought, now slap those reins one more time….
Which the elf obligingly did.
The mule brayed, and the crash of hoofs against the front of the cart boomed through the forest. The Knights swore in unison as the elf slapped the reins again.
The mule kicked a second time, then a third. The cart wobbled, and the front of it broke away. The driver jumped free, as the cart crashed onto its side, spilling shining weapons all over the road.
“Now,” said Jeratt, nudging Ander.
The boy leaped up, Jeratt beside him. Two arrows flew, and a heart’s beat later, a third. Someone screamed high; a Knight tumbled from his horse, the horse itself bellowing in pain. Kerian’s arrow had pierced its neck. Jeratt let fly a second arrow, taking down the second Knight. Behind him Kerian shot another. The Knight on the road was trying to stand, two arrows in his thigh. Ander, breaking the plan, let go his own second shaft. It struck nothing, not even the horse writhing and squealing in agony.
Jeratt grabbed him hard, shaking him. “No! Do what I told you!” He shoved him toward the slope. He turned to glare at Kerian, shouting “Go!”
She ran, scrambling down the hill to the road, slipping on old leaves and grass, righting herself every time. Heart slamming hard against her ribs, she bolted for the screaming horse. In one swift motion, she slit its throat. Blood spurted from the severed artery, rising like a crimson fountain, splashing Kerian’s hands, her face. Beside the beast lay its master, the Knight with two arrows in his thigh. Kerian saw his eyes wide and white in the shadows across the road. Helpless, he lifted a hand to the blood-soaked elf woman standing over him, to plead for mercy or to ward off a killing stroke.
“Do it!” Jeratt shouted. “Now!”
Now, or the draconians would hear the commotion and come to investigate.
Kerian gripped the bone handle, and as she did something hit her from behind, a hard weight driving her to the ground. She lost her knife, the dwarf-given weapon flung’ from her hand. A voiced cursed her in Qualinesti as the driver of the cart jammed his knee into her back, crushing air from her lungs. The elf grabbed a handful of her hair.
There was her knife, flashing in the sunlight, across her field of vision, down toward her own throat. Her cry of fear and protest sounded like strangling.
Someone thundered, “No!” and the elf strangling her jerked once, then again.
He toppled, the release of his weight as painful as the weight itself.
Kerian tried to gain her feet and fell back. A hard hand grabbed her and dragged her up. Jeratt’s bearded face came close to hers.
“Go,” he shouted. “One of the horses bolted-they’ll see it on the road. Go!”
Go … where? Strip the Knights of weapons and whatever gear they could use. Sink the tribute into the stream, let the fine steel rust and rot, useless to Thagol or the dragon.
Kerian ran, seeing the elf who’d tried to kill her out of the corner of her eye. He’d died of two arrows in the back, Jeratt’s and Ander’s. From the look of them, they’d struck at the same instant.
Jeratt and Ander sank the tribute, hauling the sacks of weapons to the stream, shoving those blades that had spilled out back among their brethren and letting the weight of steel hold the weapons under the water. While they worked, Kerian took the boots of the Knight with the smallest feet. She grabbed the swords of each and their scabbards and belts. Before her companions had returned, she stripped off the black mail shirts and left the Knights face up and staring at the overhanging willows from dead eyes.
She didn’t stop to give in to the sickness roiling in her belly until she, Jeratt, and Ander had fled the scene of the killing. Then she vomited, quietly, violently in a thicket so far from the road that the sounds of furious draconian discovery never reached her.
“You killed one of us,” Kerian said, the sour taste of bile in her mouth hours later. “You killed that Qualinesti. That’s not what we’re supposed to be doing. We’re supposed to be fighting the Knights and-”
“Just about anyone who’s trying to kill us,” Jeratt drawled, “and that elf was trying to kill you.”
Kerian snorted. “He didn’t know who we were or whether he was in danger-” She shook her head, trying to dispel the memory of the elf’s body flung away by the force of two arrows. “You could have hit him, pulled him off me. You didn’t have to kill him.”
“There wasn’t time!” spat Jerratt.
Silence stood between them, Kerian on one side of the campfire, Jeratt and Ander on the other. They had no hare on a spit over the flames, and no one had gone to catch trout from the nearby stream. Jeratt was eating a hunk of cheese and chewing on a small loaf of hard bread, which they had gotten from Felan’s wife the night before. Chewing, Jeratt jerked his head at Ander, who slipped a hand into the pouch at his belt. Kerian heard the crackle of stiff parchment as Ander unfolded it.
Jeratt jerked his head again, Ander handed the paper across the fire. Little sparks jumped up, Kerian took it quickly.
“Read,” Jeratt said.
She did, her eye leaping along the few short lines of a terse message. It commended the bearer to “the most esteemed Lord Eamutt Thagol of Qualinost and late of Monastery Bone,” and it urged the Lord Knight to reward the bearer according to the measure of his merit.
“Found this on the dead driver,” Jeratt said around the last bite of cheese.
Kenan stared at the message.
“You’re welcome,” Jeratt said dryly.
She looked up, almost absently. “Thank you.”
Ander leaned closer to the fire. “He’d have killed you, Kenan. He was trying to kill you.”
The fire hissed over green wood. “I know the elf was trying to kill me,” she said curtly, then, softer, “I was there.”
Kerian balled up the parchment. “A collaborator! A cowardly collaborator working with the Dark Knights.” She made to throw the balled sheet into the fire-then caught herself in time. She held it a little above the flame, then took it back and smoothed it across her knee.
“What?” said Jeratt, looking from her to the wrinkled page.
Kerian shook her head as she folded the parchment neatly along the original lines. “Nothing. Yet.” She leaned forward. “We need to let Felan and Bayel know. Anyone they speak to could be working for Thagol-they’re taking more of a risk than we guessed, helping us.”