Danika got the impression that the last bit of the captain’s order was more for Sergeant Black than the lieutenant. It seemed that the captain believed the lieutenant less than capable in the woods. That could work in their favor, slowing them enough to allow Ryder to find them before they reached the border.
As for the sixth mage, Danika had no idea who the Soothsayers could have meant. Only eight of the Mage-pack had been in Bercarit and the three men had gone to stop the advance of the Imperial army. While it was more likely that the Soothsayers’ crazed babbling had been misinterpreted, it was possible that one of the others had been alerted by the refugees arriving in Trouge and was even now heading back toward Bercarit to help.
Barely parting her lips, she breathed out a warning. Unrestrained, any one of the Mage-pack could send these Imperials across the border, tails between their legs.
They retrieved their packs before moving into the woods, both to cut off the corner and maintain the element of surprise. Reiter could hear raised voices even before they regained the road.
At his left shoulder, Chard snickered. “Someone’s gettin’ an earful, Cap.”
“Captain.”
“Sergeant Black calls you…”
“You’re not Sergeant Black. You haven’t earned the right.” Without Black, Chard would push. But Reiter had been a sergeant once himself; he could handle young men with delusions of experience.
The carriage, pulled as close to the far side of the road as it could go without putting the far wheels in the ditch, was a little smaller than the three they’d stopped. Reiter knew squat about carriages, but it seemed of similar quality—shiny reddish-brown paint, tarted up with unnecessary brass. No wolf’s-head crest, so it was unlikely it belonged to the mage they sought. Still, the Soothsayers had said six, six at this place in the road and it was the only carriage in sight.
The upper-class woman leaning out the open door, one hand clutching the overcoat of the equally upper-class man standing on the road, was clearly demanding he get back in. Some situations needed no translation.
The man was neither one of the beastmen nor a soldier.
The old servant at the pony’s head—gray hair, neat black clothes—was equally no threat. The coachman had a musket, but, in spite of their situation, hadn’t pulled it from the scabbard. If he was smart, that lack of foresight could save his life. Civilians died in wars, but Reiter avoided adding to their numbers when he could. He assumed there’d be a maid of some kind inside the carriage. Unless Aydori maids were combat trained, he doubted she’d give them much trouble.
He sent Best to the front of the carriage, Armin to the rear, and kept Chard with him.
The coachman, as expected, saw them first. He froze and remained frozen, hands lifted well away from his musket when he realized Chard could drop him where he sat. By the time the woman’s eyes widened and she fell silent, Best and Armin were in place. She jerked the sleeve she held until the man wearing it turned.
Reiter ignored them both and pulled the tangle from his pocket. The coach was already stopped; he could have flung the artifact from the trees had he thought of it. Not that it mattered. It hung limp from the end of his finger.
“Maybe it’s broke,” Chard muttered.
Possible. Unfortunately, Reiter had no way of checking without a mage. One not already wearing a tangle, he corrected silently.
Gesturing with his musket, he moved the man away from the door and glanced past the woman. The plump, middle-aged redhead pressed against the far door, glaring daggers at him, was clearly the maid.
“She not here!”
The maid looked as astonished as Reiter felt. He stepped back and they both stared at the woman who continued in fractured, accented, but understandable Imperial.
“She gone to Jaspyr Hagen!” Reiter took another step back as a slender finger jabbed toward him. “He come rip you throat!”
The beastmen had names.
“Lirraka!”
This close, he could see the few flecks of green in her eyes. Mage eyes. But the tangle hadn’t taken her. The tangle needed a younger woman. A stronger mage. A woman with the strength to run for the beast she controlled.
Up on the carriage step, Reiter ignored the fluent Imperial directed at him by the man—who was either bragging about the money he had or offering a bribe—and the continuing death threats by the woman. Glaring the coachman’s ass back down onto the seat, Reiter grabbed his weapon and jumped back down to the road. “Let’s go.”
“We’re just leaving them, Captain?” Chard asked, falling in beside him.
“They’re harmless. We have a line on the sixth mage,” he added when all four of them were back across the ditch and under the trees. “She’s headed for the fighting, to warn the beastmen.”
Not even Chard needed him to point out they had to stop her. If the beastmen got their scent from the road, and if even half the stories were true, none of them would reach the border.
“Why doesn’t she just use mage-craft to tell them?” Best asked as they began to move back down the hill.
“Could be she’s a Fire-mage,” Chard pointed out. “He’s not going to be sitting around a campfire scratching his fleas and waiting for her to pop out of the flames, now, is he? Not with our bloody army attacking.”
From the road behind them, they could hear the argument their presence had stopped start up again.
“Sounds like my mum having a go at my dad,” Armin muttered. “I thought they’d be more different, laying down with beasts and all.”
In all honesty, so had Reiter.
Chapter Three
“BEWARE THE NET FROM ABOVE.”
The underbrush grabbed at Mirian’s skirt. She caught her foot in a tangle of fallen branches and stumbled through a spiderweb. Resolutely not thinking of spiders in her hair or down her collar or climbing into her ears, she flailed at the strands hanging off her face as she ran.
Did Lady Hagen’s warning of a net refer to the gold glitter Mirian had seen hanging off the officer’s fingertips? It was hard to think of what else that glitter could be. Her father had spoken approvingly of the empire’s advances in technology—was this one of them? Had someone created a technology to neutralize mage-craft?
One foot dropped into a hole masked by ground cover and she fell, biting back a startled cry. The impact drove her hands wrist-deep into the leaf litter. As she pushed up, something cracked then compacted under her right palm. Soft and moist and horribly warm, it left a dark smear on her skin. Back up on her feet, she swiped her hand against her skirt and kept running.
The Mage-pack had been holding their heads in pain, unable to fight back.
The net from above, probably the gold glitter, neutralized mage-craft by wrapping around the head. Logically, the net had to do something more than merely wrap, but how it did what it did wasn’t as important right now as what it did.
Mirian ducked under a branch and wondered if the net would’ve worked on the Mage-pack had they been wearing hats. Last season, the style in Aydori had been for little knots of flowers and lace perched precariously on shell combs that dropped off during the change to fur. Would the Imperial army have taken fashion into account?
She jerked to one side as the pocket on her skirt caught then tore, bounced off a tree trunk, and through another web.
“Beware the net from above.”
The soldiers wouldn’t want her regardless of what the net was or where it came from. She wasn’t Mage-pack. Her professors had made it clear they considered her barely a mage. Still, Jaspyr Hagen had said she smelled amazing and Lady Hagen had sent a warning….