Brennan had a sword at his belt and a bow on his back, and he was an uninvited and unwelcome guest in the most powerful, most dangerous domain the world had known in centuries. He should have been afraid; uneasy, at the very least. He was neither because he was one of the Free, and the Free were powerful and dangerous too.
He had killed two men since he had joined the Free. He would be killing more soon. Very soon. It was a part of what he did now.
Gazing out over Lorin and Manadar’s heads, he saw that indistinct figure drawing slowly closer, becoming a little less indistinct with each passing moment. It was a person, beyond doubt.
‘There’s no one at our back,’ he called down to Lorin.
The older man waved a hand in casual acknowledgement without looking round. He and Manadar were both staring fixedly at the approaching wanderer. Brennan looked too, as he allowed his horse to step gingerly back down the slope towards the others.
Was that a dust cloud out on the glassy horizon, some way behind that lone figure, rising from some other feet?
‘There more than one out there?’ he asked as he drew up alongside Lorin.
Lorin grunted, but said nothing. He scraped a fingernail absently down the length of the scar on his right cheek. He did that sometimes, when turning thoughts over in his head. Brennan had never heard the story of the scar from Lorin’s own mouth, but by all accounts a man had put it there while trying to steal Lorin’s horse. By those same accounts, the trade of injuries had been uneven: Lorin acquired a scar; the would-be thief acquired a broken neck.
‘Something’s stirring things up, further out,’ Manadar mused.
The dust cloud was small, little more than a faint, brownish smudge at the very limit of sight, but it was enough to put all three of them on edge. Brennan was still not afraid. He could admit to the stirring of a little unease though. This was the brutal Empire of Orphans, where death might come in many forms, any one of which might raise a small cloud on its approach for all he knew. Even setting aside all other possibilities, the men they had followed here-the men they were hunting-were cruel and numerous. Though they were far from the worst the Empire had to offer, they were not by any means a safe or easy quarry. If they had been, it would not have required the Free to hunt them down.
‘Takes four or five horses to raise dust like that out here, I’d guess,’ Lorin said thoughtfully.
‘One on foot, followed at a distance-pursued perhaps-by four or five atop horses,’ Manadar said, and Brennan could hear the amusement and anticipation in his voice. ‘That sounds interesting, don’t you think? Doesn’t that sound like it might be interesting?’
‘Might be, might be,’ Lorin acknowledged.
Which was enough to light a little spark of excitement in Brennan’s chest. His hand had gone to the hilt of his sword before he even knew it was moving. He had his own guess now about what it was they were seeing out there on the hot ground: a slave running from slavers. The same Imperial slavers the Free had chased into this land of the Orphans.
‘If it comes to blood-work, you’ll be wanting your bow, not your blade,’ Lorin observed without looking at him.
Quite calm. If he shared Manadar and Brennan’s eagerness, the sentiment was well hidden. Brennan took the advice and unslung his bow. He felt for the arrows quivered at his horse’s side. An unnecessary, almost unconscious gesture: they were hardly likely to have disappeared since he put them there.
‘We’re only supposed to be scouting the trail,’ Lorin said. Which was true, of course. Their task was to forge the path for the seventeen others of the Free who were not far behind them; to read and mark the way that the hundred or more slavers they were hunting had taken.
‘But this does look a little interesting,’ Lorin went on. ‘And we’re going to have to get around to killing slavers and saving slaves some time if this contract’s ever to be done.’
Manadar grinned at Brennan.
‘Might be nothing though,’ Lorin cautioned, frowning in what Brennan suspected was pretend disapproval. ‘Might be nothing to do with our business at all. We kill the wrong man out here, we could all wind up in the bellies of corpse-crows and lizards. Empire’s like a hive of mad bees: you swat one of them and soon enough you’ll be breathing the whole swarm into your chest. So don’t either of you go starting anything until we know which way the river’s running.’
‘Never have, never will.’ Manadar smiled.
II
They rode slowly out in line abreast, well spaced. Brennan strung his bow as they went. He was still somewhat clumsy and unpractised at it. The whole notion of using a bow on horseback was new to him. Like several of the Free, he had been learning from Hamdan, a Massatan whose people knew the skill from birth as best Brennan could tell. It would never come as naturally to him, he imagined, but then it hardly needed to. There were few other horse archers in the Hommetic Kingdom. Having even a handful, late learners or not, gave the Free another small claim on the fear of their enemies. One among many.
‘Anyone looses a shaft without my word, I’ll make you walk all the way back to Yulan to explain yourself,’ Lorin said.
Brennan tugged at his bowstring, testing it. He steered his horse with his legs and his weight just as Hamdan had taught.
The sun was off on their left, high and hard. At least it would not be in their eyes. He had no sooner thought that than he had cause to doubt whether the sun’s place in the sky mattered.
As the distance closed between them and the staggering, stumbling figure and the riders further out, that figure stumbled once too often. Fell to the ground. And the riders beyond, dark shapes all but obscured by their own dust and the heat shimmer, appeared to draw to a halt. Brennan did not know whether to be relieved or disappointed at that.
Lorin kept his horse to the same steady pace. The three of them advanced upon the fallen man. The other horsemen-there were half a dozen of them, Brennan could see now-remained still. They held at a longbowshot’s distance. Brennan slid an arrow from his quiver and set it to the string. There was no harm in being prepared, but he did not draw the bowstring back. Not yet.
The solitary figure rose, not far ahead of them now, and Brennan realised with an involuntary grunt of surprise that it was a woman. She came unsteadily towards them. Her hair was matted and lank; her clothes dirty and ragged. She was dressed as any villager might be, in a long, heavy skirt and a light cloth jacket. To Brennan, she certainly looked as someone might after they had been seized from their fields by raiding slavers.
She almost fell once more as she drew near, but kept her footing. She showed no sign of injury. It was exhaustion, perhaps the weakness of hunger and thirst, which made her so unsteady.
Lorin drew his horse to a halt and Brennan and Manadar did likewise, flanking him.
Brennan made to dismount, ready to help the woman. Lorin forestalled that, not sharply but firmly.
‘Keep your saddle, boy. You don’t go to ground when there’s folk with blades sitting on horses close by. Let her come to us, if that’s what she wants to do.’
‘Help me,’ the woman called out, almost as if answering Lorin’s words.
Her voice was a cracking, crumbling rasp. Brennan doubted any water had passed her lips in a long time.
Manadar beckoned her.
‘Come to me; I’ll lift you up,’ he told her.