02 - The Barbed Rose (41 page)

“So…” Viyelle put her set of currycombs back in the pack. “If the demons were destroyed at that battle, the one that made this place, why are we fighting demons now—what? Two thousand years later?”

Kallista blew out a puff of air, looking to the others for ideas, suggestions. “Because some of them weren’t caught with the others? Or maybe they escaped from hell?”

“Either is possible, I suppose.” Torchay slung an arm over Kallista’s shoulders, squeezing into the tiny gap between her and Viyelle. “Does it really matter?”

“I suppose not.” Viyelle shrugged. “But I’ve never been fond of cleaning up other people’s messes.”

“
Our
mess now.” And they
would
clean it up, Kallista vowed. Once and for all.

“I can ride.” Aisse wasn’t at all certain of any such thing, but she didn’t like the worry on Stone’s face.

“It’s only been a week since your child was born,” Merinda snapped. She’d been irritated at one thing or another for days. Of course, anyone emptying her stomach on such a regular basis deserved to be cranky. “You have no business getting on a horse for at least another two weeks. Four would be better.”

“But the outlaws—”

“We’re safe enough here.” Stone ducked back through the cave’s entrance.

“With all these horses to feed? And a goat?” Aisse had seen the sparseness of the grass. Nothing to stretch the grain they’d carried with them.

“We’ll manage. Let them get ahead of us and we’ll sneak out to follow.” Stone squatted beside the barricade of pack saddles that kept the twins confined and off the unpadded cave floor. Rozite rolled to her back and gurgled at him. His returning smile made Aisse’s heart ache.

Then panic speared through her at a shout from outside.

“Oi! Tibrans!”

Cursing, Stone drew his Heldring sword and strode to the entrance. Aisse clutched her sleeping child tight as she eased past the restless animals to the farthest reaches of the cave, near the tiny pool that provided their water. Merinda followed her, a twin under each arm.

“We know you’re in there,” the voice shouted. “Hard to hide in the Empty Lands, ’cause they’re so empty.”

“What do you want?” Stone crouched to see out the cave’s opening.

“The gold o’ course. The women. You. They said you were a pretty one.”

“
Who
said?”

One of the horses moved aside and Aisse turned her head against the shaft of sunlight suddenly in her eyes. The high opening kept the cave from total darkness. She looked up at the irregular hole. It was in the top of the cave, but it stretched close to the side. Could she…?

“Watch Niona.” Aisse laid her daughter on a pile of horse blankets, tucking the soft coverlet around her face. “Don’t let anything happen to her.”

“If the bandits get in, I can’t—”

“Just don’t let the horses step on her.” Aisse didn’t have time for Merinda’s fretting.

The bandits were still talking to Stone. Who knew how long he could stall them, or what they would do when they got tired of it? Or maybe the bandits were doing the stalling, keeping Stone occupied while
they
worked their way to the cave’s high opening.

Aisse found what she needed in the packs and slung it over her shoulder before starting her climb. The rocks were rough, porous, and scraped her hands as she climbed using the many hand- and footholds provided by the ropy, twisted formations. Every few steps, she stopped to listen, but the shouting in and out of the cave covered any other sounds.

At the top, she clung to the rocks and listened again, head down to keep from being seen, in case there was someone to see. She eased her Heldring blade—a rapier like Kallista’s but smaller—out of its scabbard and looked through the opening. Nothing was visible anywhere she could see, but she could hear a faint sound of falling gravel.

Aisse poked her head above ground. There. Someone was climbing up, another behind him, but still some distance away. She scrambled through the hole and thrust her hand into the bag over her shoulder, pulling out a fistful of coins.

“Hey! Bottom feeders!” She had their attention. The two climbers scurried faster. She could hear Stone’s shouts echoing through the opening behind her. He wasn’t happy.

“Is this what you want?” Aisse threw her arm out and golden coins fell in a wide glittering arc to bounce across the black rock, coming to rest in crevices and crannies all down the slope.

The outlaws stopped scrambling after her and started scrabbling for the gold. Those below, in front of the cave’s entrance, started up the slope after the gold. Aisse threw another handful, and another and another, until she shook the bag empty. Gold winked all down the steep hillside like stars against the night sky.

Below, she saw Stone creep unnoticed from the cave, and adjusted her grip on her own sword. She was weak, completely out of any shape resembling a warrior’s, but she would fight for her babies.

Stone dispatched two bandits before the others noticed him at their backs. He leaped high, catching one around the ankle that kicked at him, pulling her down on top of him as they both fell. The fight was over quickly and Stone rushed up the slope after the rest.

A distant shout had Aisse jerking around to see half a dozen riders pelting across the rock at a reckless pace and another lurching up from the dry gully where they’d hidden their approach. Aisse shouted a warning. The outlaws glanced at the riders and sped up their gold mining.

Stone didn’t bother to look. “Go back inside!”

Aisse ignored him. She wouldn’t be much help, but some help was better than none, even if—especially if—the outlaws’ numbers were doubling.

How did these new outlaws ride so fast? Stone had held their group to a crawling pace for the horses’ sake as well as hers. This rock weathered to a sharp grit or porous lace that abraded the horses’ feet and sometimes cut them open. But these riders raced across the rough surface as if it were a grassy meadow, their mounts’ hooves striking sparks.

An outlaw, pockets bulging with coins, cast another look at the oncoming riders before she broke and ran. Maybe the new group wasn’t part of this one. Maybe they intended to steal from the thieves. Stone let her go, as he did the next few to abandon the gold hunt, slide down the hillside and race for their mounts. Two more remained, the two who had been climbing before Aisse threw away the first gold.

They still ranged across the slope, picking out each shining coin between glances at Aisse, at Stone, at the galloping riders. Did they mean to take over the cave and defend it? To take hostages, or just kill them all?

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

A
isse eased away from the gaping hole. If she had to try to fight, she didn’t want to worry about her footing.

Stone had almost reached the outlaws when one of them—younger, with only a thin fringe of brownish beard—threw himself sideways, on top of Stone. The outlaw slashed with a dagger. The close quarters and steep slope made it almost impossible for Stone to bring his sword to bear. Did he have a dagger? Aisse wanted to watch, to see him safe, but she couldn’t take her focus off the other outlaw. The one closest to her.

He grinned, showing blackened teeth in a mouth surrounded by grizzled beard stubble, and changed his ascent to come directly at her. Aisse backed away, circling the opening in the ground, afraid to move too far away, though she feared stumbling and falling through. She couldn’t let this outlaw past her. Not without a fight.

The riders thundered nearer, to the base of the conical hill and past it, chasing the outlaws fleeing on the backs of their tender-footed horses. Stone shouted, still wrestling with the young bandit.

The old one looked from the vanishing riders to Aisse and chuckled. She adjusted the grip on her sword and flexed her knees, glancing back to check the position of the cave opening behind her. Maybe she could fall down and hamstring him as he ran by, or maybe—

He rushed her. Aisse stumbled and fell, not quite intentionally. She managed to get her sword up and edge-on as she rolled to the side, slicing him across the knees. He shouted, flying forward. His head struck the far side of the opening, jerking back at an impossible angle as the weight of his shoulders dragged him lower. He balanced there a moment, an unnatural stopper in the neck of the cave’s bottle, then his muscles went utterly limp and he slid into the darkness below. The noise of horses frightened by bloody, scary things echoed up through the hole.

“Aisse!” Stone’s shout caught her attention. He scrambled up the slope toward her, his face a mask of blood, the hill empty behind him.

“He’s dead,” she said. “But you’re hurt!” She rolled to her knees—standing wasn’t much easier this week than it had been last—and Stone was there lifting her up.

“It’s a scratch. Are you hurt?” He swiped at the blood on his forehead, revealing a tiny cut. “Always bleed like a slaughtered pig from a cut there. You’re sure? You’re all right?”

“I fell, that’s all. I’m fine.”

“Thank the One.” Weary, he rested his face on her shoulder, smearing blood on her already filthy smock. “You know that you are in big, enormous trouble for climbing up here and risking what you did. I’m going to beat you for it once we get to Korbin and I’ve rested up a bit.”

“You can try.” Aisse didn’t bother hiding her smile. He couldn’t see it from where he was. “I’ll be rested up then, too.”

“True.”

She stroked his hair, still cottony soft even short as it was, and stared across the black wasteland at the fleeing outlaws and their relentless pursuers.

Aisse sighed. “Of course it all depends on whether we survive the next thirty ticks. The riders are coming back.”

Stone straightened, turned, shaded his eyes to see. He sighed, too. “You’d think they’d be smarter. They ought to realize they’ve got no chance. Not with the Tiger Aila on our side.”

He gave Aisse a quick, tight hug and kissed her cheek. “You stay and defend this opening. I’ve got to get back down below.”

She watched him slide down the crumbly rock, blinking in shock. A Tibran warrior trusted
her
to help defend a position? Her legs quivered with exhaustion. Her back ached. Her hand barely had strength enough to hold the sword, much less swing it. But she would stand. She would hold. Stone depended on her.

The riders advanced at that uncanny speed. They seemed faceless under the dull gray metal hats they wore. The featureless shadows unnerved Aisse until they came near enough she could see that they wore hoods under the brimmed helmets with masks that covered their faces up to their eyes.

Stone stood his ground in front of the cave’s lower entrance, looking rather frightening himself with blood coating his bare skin. The riders galloped up with a deafening clangor of hooves to halt a scant pace away.

Stone never flinched. “What do you want?”

The rider in front pulled off his helmet and hood, revealing garish orange hair and a beaked nose rivaling any hawk’s. “Would you lot happen to be iliasti of an ugly rogue goes by the name of Torchay Omvir? We’re kinsmen, and we’ve been hunting them for weeks.”

Finally, finally the green of the mountains flowed down to mingle with the rusted black rock of the Empty Lands. Kallista could feel the links with her two absent marked ones grow stronger with every day, every league that passed, and it made her more and more anxious to cross those leagues that yet separated them. Gradually, the rocks jutting up from the grassy earth changed from harsh black volcanic extrusions to the gray or pink or green of granite as they pushed deeper into the mountains.

The Devil’s Tooth range rose high and higher as the neck of land narrowed, connecting Adara’s continent to the one of the Tibrans to the north. Few could live in the higher reaches of the mountains—trappers, a few goat herders, hermits of one sort or another. The wide southernmost valleys on the edge of the Empty Lands were filled with a hardy folk, many of whom raised the sturdy, surefooted horses that performed best in Adara’s mountainous regions. Torchay’s family lived very nearly in the center of the populated sector of Korbin prinsipality.

As they rode into the lands owned by the Omvir line, Torchay’s kin and cousins came out to greet them. They rode companionably alongside for a league or two, sometimes more, sharing food, drink and news, most notably of recent arrivals. A man, two women, three babies and a hulking great bag of gold, not to mention a number of very fine horses, and a goat, had paraded through the valley not two weeks before, escorted by a number of Omvir kinsmen.

A whole troop of soldiers had also come all the way from Arikon to Trondholl on the coast and thence to Grassy Valley to chase out rebels, protect the locals and find Torchay’s missing iliasti. All of Korbin had rarely seen so much excitement.

Kallista hadn’t visited Torchay’s home since they’d been up here on a bandit-suppression assignment six or seven years back, but she recognized the landmarks as they neared. Or perhaps she simply read Torchay’s rising eagerness. Then a rider broke away to race ahead of the galloping throng coming toward them. Kallista kicked her weary mount into a canter.

Stone didn’t slow as their horses neared. He leaned out and snatched her from the saddle, yanking her into his lap as he galloped on toward the others. She was laughing, alternating between hugging him and smacking him for his outrageous prank when he pulled to a halt beside Fox.

She swatted Stone’s shoulder. “I don’t know why I’m so glad to see you.”

“I’m irresistible.” He grinned at her and she hugged him again.

He dumped her in Obed’s lap so abruptly, the dark man almost dropped her, and reached across the gap to haul Fox into a back-pounding hug, despite their horses’ distress. “
You’re here
. You’re finally here.”

He let go of Fox to scowl at Kallista. “What took you so bloody damn long?”

“We had to go collect Fox first.” She’d have smacked him again, but he was out of reach and wisely, he stayed there. “So tell us about the baby.”

“She is beautiful.” Stone grinned. “Not as beautiful as Rozite, of course, but with Fox as a sire, she was behind from the start.”