“Take c-care of yourself, will you?”
“Me, take care of myself? Lad, I’m not the one going out into a snowstorm!” Dorlyth frowned. Then he winked, and growled, “I thought you said Pelmen was coming to visit?”
“He said he was. B-but you know P-pel men
“Indeed I do.” Dorlyth nodded sourly. “If he says he’s on his way, that means don’t expect him.” Rosha climbed back onto the horse’s back, and the animal allowed Dorlyth to come up close without moving.
“One thing more,” Dorlyth muttered, and Rosha looked at him expectantly, “If you get married, at least let me know. Fathers are interested in that sort of thing.”
Rosha laughed, and with a twist of his hand was gone, out the stable door and into the crisp air of early morning.
In a moment both horse and rider had disappeared into the swirling snow.
“Merciful, that,” muttered Dorlyth to himself. He hated long good-byes.
Admon Faye did not permit his troop of brigands any rest until they swept past the last cultivated field and entered the edge of the Great South Fir.
The three lands were divided from one another by two great natural barriers. The Spinal Range, a wall of rock that separated Chaomonous from Lamath, started in the sea itself as the formation of islands called the Border Straits. From the coast it ran one hundred and thirty miles inland to the west. Its granite cliffs were unbroken, save for that one legendary pass known as Dragonsgate, At Drag-onsgate, the mountain range divided, and separate arms extended into both sections of the other geographical barrier the Great Fir. This band of rugged forest was fifty miles wide at its narrowest point, but that was around the base of the mountains, where it was also so dense as to be impenetrable to all but wood creatures. The mountains formed the dividing line, separating the Great Fir into northern and southern sections.
Eighty miles southwest of the Spinal Range, the Great South Fir could be passed. But few people attempted the feat. Most of those who did were slavers. Any other small party travelling alone in the Great Fir was likely to finish the journey with slavers in chains.
The Great Fir was the closest thing Admon Faye had to a home or it had been, until his recent conquest of Dragonsgate. Scattered through the forest were his cleared campsites. Some of these were of enormous size but so skillfully hidden in the thickets as to be unrecognizable to all but the trained woodsman. It was not until they reached one of these hidden shelters that Admon Faye let his weary band stop.
His little army of forty swords had more than tripled in this latest visit to Chaomonous, and now a hundred and fifty men scrambled for the best of the tent sites, and fought one another for firewood.
Bronwynn, however, stayed astride her horse. Though exhausted by the journey, she refused to budge until some 0 The WiztrJ in Waiting one cut her bonds and lifted her down. If she were to be the Queen of this ragged rabble, they could begin now to show her a little respect.
“Are you planning on going somewhere, girl?”
Bronwynn stiffened her shoulders at the sound of Admon Faye’s voice. He was behind her, but she refused to turn her head. “I’m going nowhere until someone does me the courtesy of cutting my bonds and getting me down.”
“Take that attitude about it,” he growled, “and you may be sure no one will. Get off.” She didn’t budge. “I guess you must like it up there,” he said after a moment.
“Like it?” Bronwynn snapped. “My bottom is black and blue.”
“If it isn’t, it will be,” he threatened, “unless you hop down off that horse and start collecting some firewood. Your hands are tied in front of you. You can get off easily enough.”
Bronwynn sighed, then kicked her right leg over the horse’s head and pivoted on the saddle, dropping easily to the ground. She groaned. The insides of her thighs were raw, and her legs were cramped from clamping tightly onto the saddle. Admon Faye chuckled behind her. She turned to glare at him, loathing everything about him.
He chopped a point on one end of a branch with a heavy knife. Then he reversed the stake and lopped off two forking branches at the other end, leaving the fork in it to hold a spit of meat. Then he looked up at Bronwynn. “You want your ropes cut? Here’s the knife.” The weapon came flipping at her end over end, and Bronwynn jerked away, but it buried itself harmlessly in the mulch several inches short of where her foot had been. “Wouldn’t have hit you, your Highness.” Admon Faye snickered, as did the other outlaws who happened to be standing nearby.
Then the slaver turned his back on her and buried the point of his stake at the edge of an old fire pit Bronwynn picked up the knife and, after an awkward moment of pushing and reaching, managed at last to cut through her bonds. Then she looked around. No one was watching her.
Admon Faye’s back was turned, as he leaned on the stake, driving it into the ground.
Bronwynn was angry, and that anger clouded her good sense. Dismissing the possible consequences of success, she grabbed the knife in both hands and vaulted toward Admon Faye’s broad back. But before she would reach it, that back had moved the stake wasn’t in place anymore either.
Admon Faye sidestepped her charge and brought the stick arching around behind her. At the very instant she realized he had moved, the stick cracked painfully across her backside, and she fell most ingloriously into the ashes of the fire pit It wasn’t the blow that hurt her most.
It was the shout of laughter that greeted her humiliation.
“Remarkable, isn’t it,” Admon Faye remarked to a comrade, “how they all try exactly the same thing?”
“Get up, girl,” someone laughed, “and take comfort in the fact that you aren’t the first who’s pitched headlong into a fire bed
“My Lady,” Admon Faye mocked her, “I hope you are appreciative. I did at least wait about starting the fire until after you took your tumble.”
Bronwynn felt certain that no fire could burn as hot as her cheeks did right now. She could hear the laughter rippling through the far side of the camp as the news was quickly relayed.
Admon Faye stepped down into the pit it was shallow, only a foot or so deep and dragged her stumbling and choking to her feet. She cowered away, expecting another blow to blacken her other eye. Admon Faye felt her jerk and grinned. He was, by both instinct and training, a bully.
And he knew from long experience that to withhold an expected blow sometimes struck the soul with more savagery than a punch. He withheld this one. He shoved her away with a derisive snort, and left her standing in humiliation in the ashes.
Bronwynn felt the intended shame she wasn’t even worth hitting! She dragged herself out of the pit and sat down on the edge of it. For the first time in a long time, she filled her hands with hot tears.
Rosha thoroughly enjoyed his first day of travel. The snowstorm, moving rapidly westward toward the High City of Ngandib, passed over him by midmorning, and when the sky cleared, the rays of the sun turned the snow-blanketed landscape a dazzling white. Though many miles away still, he fancied he could see the summit of Dragonsgate far to the northeast, and his heart quickened at the memory of the recent triumph there a triumph in which he’d played a leading part. He booted his mount, and they plunged onward at a trot. Snow sprayed up around the hooves of his war-horse as they journeyed down through shallow valleys and over small hills, past small stands of trees denuded by the winter cold.
They passed few castles, and Rosha gave these a wide berth. It wasn’t that he feared danger from them. He just couldn’t shake the memory of a dozen ugly daughters, girls who’d been pushed at him by the most influential rulers of the land in fits of fatherly matchmaking. Rosha swore under his breath that he would not attend another banquet.