Crecheling (16 page)

Aleena’s bully of a husband stepped forward and spoke to the Outriders, but his words were too low to hear.

“He’s whispering because he thinks we’re in the cabin,” Dyan said.

“Shh.”

Three of the riders dismounted. They stepped forward into the light of the cottage’s windows, cast by the fire within, and then Dyan saw that two of them wore Outrider’s coats and hats, and the third was covered in a Magister’s cloak. At the same moment, the two Outriders removed their hats.

Dyan gasped.

“Holy Mother!” Eirig and Jak cursed together.

The two dismounted riders were Shad and Cheela.

***

Chapter Seventeen

“Zarah,” Dyan whispered, looking down at the hooded figure and willing it to reveal its face. Something about the Magister-cloaked person felt terribly wrong. She didn’t think Magister Zarah would have betrayed her, not unless she had been forced to. It seemed ridiculous effort to go to, to warn Dyan off a week ago only to hunt her down and kill her now.

The thin, scarred figure of Elber caught up to the riders and the Magister pulled back her hood.

It wasn’t Zarah. The woman in the black cloak was jowled and blonde. She had a drooping nose and one eye that seemed to blink rapidly in the darkness, but her face, on the whole, looked kind. She looked compassionate. She looked like a Magister.

And then Dyan realized she had seen the Magister before. She had seen her at the Hanging, watching Dyan in the crowd. The Magister said something inaudible and gestured to Shad and Cheela. They went into the cabin, Elber trailing behind.

Narl drew his knife. It glinted yellow and cruel in the firelight.

“I should have stayed,” Jak muttered.

Dyan put a hand on Jak’s arm. He was taut as a bowstring and trembled. “It’ll be fine,” she told him.

She knew she was lying, but it was a lie she had to tell. She wished she had her bow to hand, and arrows. In the darkness, they’d never see her attacks coming.

She shook her head to clear it.

Shad emerged from the cabin. He held Aleena, one hand on the nape of her neck and the other pinning her arm behind her back. She hung slack-limbed, letting him push her, and Cheela came out after them.

“They were here,” Shad said. “They’re gone.”

“That’s my woman you have there.” Narl tossed his cigarette to the dirt and ground out its spark with his heel. “They can’t be far,” he growled. “Up the canyon or on the mesa.”

Shad didn’t release Aleena.

“We’ll attend to the outlaw Jak and the renegade Aleena in due time,” the Magister said. The tone of her voice was patient and warm, though the words promised death. “There are prior orders of business to attend to.”

Narl looked slightly uneasy. “I’d rather not get paid until after they’re captured,” he said. “Alyra, get back in the house!”

Shad didn’t release Aleena, and she didn’t go anywhere.

The fourth figure eased its horse a little closer into the light. This one, too, was cloaked and hatted like an Outrider. Narl held the tip of his knife pointing down at his own feet, but it looked to Dyan like he shifted slightly as the horse approached, bringing the weapon in front of himself defensively.

“Your woman’s an outlaw, Narl,” Shad said. His voice was hard. He seemed tall and unflappable, like the funvid Outriders. “And you knew it.”

“Mother,” Jak murmured.

Narl’s face contorted in the yellow light. He opened his mouth to frame what looked like a denial, but shifted and tried a sheepish look. “I suspected she was,” he admitted. “But how could you ever be sure about something like that? And a man doesn’t want to go accusing his own Goodwife of being an outlaw without being sure. Especially when she’s such a good hand at planting and lambing.” Narl grinned roughly. “And such a warm comfort on the winter nights, if you know what I mean.”

“I do,” said the Magister coolly.

The mounted Outrider’s arm flashed up and down in the shadows—

and Narl’s head spun off his neck, thumping softly into the dirt.

Aleena screamed.

Jak trembled. Dyan could hear his teeth grinding.

“I can’t bring myself to feel too bad about that one,” Eirig whispered.

Narl’s body toppled forward like a felled tree, not bending at the knees or waist. When it hit the ground, blood spurted out the trunk of its neck, painting dark streaks—black in the dim light—on the packed earth.

“Bola,” Dyan whispered.

Elber ran. He sprinted past the Magister and towards the sheep meadow. For a moment, Dyan thought the Systemoids might let him go, or he might get away for lack of their caring.

But the mounted Outrider’s arm flashed again, and Elber’s torso fell off his legs, severed completely through at the hips. He hit the ground with a sound that seemed too loud for his scrawny body, and began to scream. His screams and Aleena’s clashed in awful cacophony until the unknown Outrider rode over to the thrashing hired man, pulled out his monofilament whip, and cracked it down once.

Elber fell silent, cut completely in half again, and this time through the lungs.

Aleena stopped screaming.

“Let her go,” Jak muttered, and picked up a rock in his hand.

Eirig put his hand on Jak’s to restrain him, and Dyan wasn’t sure what she should do.

“Aleena, daughter of Rosyn,” the Magister said. “You’ve stayed hidden a long time.”

Aleena sagged. “I’ve always known one day the Outriders would kill me,” she said. Her voice wasn’t defiant. She sounded resigned.

“Capture or kill,” Shad corrected her. He and the Magister both sounded kindly.

Dyan felt sick to her stomach.

“I’d ask you where the outlaw Jak and the renegade Dyan have gone,” the Magister said, “if I had any hope that you’d tell me anything useful.” She paused and licked her lips with the tip of a shockingly red tongue. “Do I have any such hope?”

Aleena spat on the ground.

“Cheela,” the Magister said, nodding.

Cheela grabbed Aleena by her upper arm and dragged the girl away from Shad.

“I love my brother,” Aleena called defiantly to the Magister. “He’s smarter than all of you put together, and he’s probably stealing horses from old Orvyl Rich in Marsick right now. You murderers will never catch him.”

Dyan had one bola, but she looked down at the party below her and despaired. The Magister and all three of the Outriders would be fully armed. Even if she managed to eliminate one of them, she would reveal her position. The others would kill Aleena anyway, and then Jak, Eirig, and Dyan would be easy targets.

Jak thumped the rock in his hand against the dirt, snorting in frustration. He’d made the same calculation, Dyan guessed.

“Outrider-designate Cheela, my child,” the Magister said. “You’ve heard all the words before. Take your prey, and become Blooded.”

Cheela threw Aleena away from her. Jak’s sister stumbled, and at the last moment her composure broke again. She turned to run, as Elber had—

Cheela snapped her whip, once—

and Aleena collapsed, dead.

Air hissed softly out between Jak’s teeth. Dyan looked at his face and saw tears streaming down it. She reached an arm across his shoulders and squeezed him in something like a hug. He sobbed, once, softly, and relaxed into her one-armed embrace.

“Well done, Cheela,” the Magister said. “The Outriders will have more ceremony for you later, back at Buza System. For now, I am instructed to give you this.” She produced something from under her cloak and handed it to Cheela. Cheela took the object, bowed gratefully, and attached it to her belt. It looked like a long knife.

A vibro-blade, Dyan thought.

“You could have told me,” Shad said.

“You’re a good Outrider, Shad,” the Magister said. The warmth was gone from her voice. “That’s enough work for one person. Don’t try to be a Magister, too.”

“They carved a hole out of the back of the cabin,” Cheela said. “The shepherd was probably right. They’ve run up the canyon.”

“We’ll find out.” Shad reached into the bandanna around his neck and pulled up goggles, seating them over his eyes.

“Stay down!” Dyan hissed, and all three of them ducked lower. She kept her head up just high enough to keep an eye on the action below.

“Can he see in the dark with those?” Eirig whispered.

Dyan nodded. “There’s a nightvision setting and a heatvision setting,” she said. “Either one of those is bad for us.”

“Outrider Lorne,” the Magister said, “stay here in case we miss them and they double back.” She swung into her horse’s saddle. Cheela and Shad followed her example, and then Shad led the way around behind the cabin.

Jak picked up his rock again. “We only have a few minutes,” he whispered. “I’m going to jump the Outrider.”

“We can run,” Eirig suggested.

“No.” Dyan took the bola from her boot. “I’ll take him.”

She crept forward to the edge of the mesa.

Below her, stone flowed down in steep, liquid slabs to the cabin and the packed earth around it. The Outrider activated the locator switch in his bola holster, dropped easily from his horse and walked in her direction.

She prepared to attack. Could she really do this? It wasn’t a fight, it was murder from ambush.

But Outrider Lorne wasn’t an innocent. Outrider Lorne had just killed two men, and now wanted her dead, too.

Lorne bent down to pick up the glowing red light that was his bola.

Still Dyan hesitated.

“Dyan,” Jak whispered. “They killed Aleena.”

Dyan let fly.

Lorne collapsed silently in a shower of his own blood. Because he was crouched, the bola cut through his neck and his legs in a single cut, and his various parts sagged out from the center like a blooming flower of bloody meat. His horse whinnied, startled.

“Come on!” Jak whispered. He grabbed Dyan’s hand and pulled her after him, forward over the face of the slope.

Her boots skidded and scraped on the stone. She thought she would fall, but once she was on the face of the slope she discovered it was less steep than it had seemed. The scritching of her boots’ soles sounded like thunder in her ears, but so did her heartbeat, and surely, she thought, that must be inaudible to other people.

“Mount up!” Jak whispered.

Eirig climbed into the saddle of the Outrider’s horse. The horse trembled, nervous and balking at the smell of blood, but submitted.

Dyan steeled herself. If Shad and Cheela caught up with them, she couldn’t be unarmed. She found her own bola, grabbed both of Lorne’s, and then pulled the Outrider’s body back by the shoulder to get his whip.

The body twitched as she touched it, and more blood spurted from the stumps of its neck and thighs. Dyan felt sick, but at least she couldn’t see Lorne’s face. She steeled herself and grabbed the monofilament whip. Lorne’s goggles lay there in the gore as well, and she picked them up.

In a last-second moment of inspiration, she plucked the Outrider’s badge from his chest, too.

Jak rode up to her on their Nemapi horse. He’d bridled it, but didn’t waste any time putting on a saddle. “Now!” he hissed.

Dyan scrambled up behind Eirig with her precious bloodstained loot, and they started across the meadow.

“Where do we go?” Eirig asked. His voice quavered slightly.

“You heard Aleena,” Jak said. “She practically suggested we go rob Orvyl Rich. Without a third horse, we’ll travel really slow.”

“I heard her,” Dyan said. “So did everyone else.”

She was thinking about Shad. Cheela was a killer more than anything else. She delighted in the shedding of blood and was good at it. But Shad was at home in the wilderness. He was a tracker and a survivor, and now that he had full Outrider’s gear he could see in the dark. She needed to do something to obscure their trail.

“Open the gate,” she told Jak.

He rode ahead towards the meadow’s entrance. Dyan wondered exactly how much time they had.

“What are we doing?” Eirig asked. “If I’d known this was going to be the slow horse, I’d have ridden with Jak.”

“Give me the reins,” she told him, and without waiting for his cooperation, she took them.

Narl’s sheep lay in warm woolly clumps about the edges of the meadow. Her arms wrapped around Eirig to hold the horse’s reins, she galloped at the nearest knot of them. They scattered, bleating, and she charged them in the direction of the gate.

“This is noisy,” Eirig pointed out. “I thought we were trying to sneak away!”

Dyan ignored him. She ran at another bundle of sheep, and then a third, nudging them all in the direction of the open gate. Other sheep had awoken on their own now, and much of the herd flowed bleating for freedom.

That was all she was willing to risk. Shad and Cheela would have to get off their horses, and they would climb carefully, to avoid any possibility of ambush, but any moment now they would arrive at the top of the mesa and see Dyan running away with the sheep.

If they hadn’t done it already. Dyan couldn’t turn around to look, and she was out of bola range, so if the Outriders had already spotted her, they might be racing back for their horses. Or they might already be on their horses, chasing after her.

Jak met them at the gate. He turned his unsaddled horse awkwardly, to point it in the same direction they were headed. “Like sheep?” he called as they ran neck and neck.

“Lamb stew,” Eirig laughed. “Wahai specialty.”

His joke made Dyan sad. It reminded her of Aleen’s stew, and Aleen’s sudden murder at the hands of Cheela and the Magister, and her own order to Cull Jak, and every other thing that had turned upside down and wrong in her life in the last two weeks.

Jak fell quiet, too.

“They’ll be able to follow us by our heat trails,” she said. “In the day, when it’s hot, that will be difficult for them. Right now, in the evening’s cold, our horses leave great red streaks of heat across the ground, when the Outriders look with their goggles.”

“So we run with the sheep,” Jak said. “That way they have a harder time following our tracks.”

“For how long?” Eirig asked.

“As long as we can manage it,” Dyan said. She handed the reins back to Eirig. “Stay on the main road for now,” she told him, “but try to drive little packets of sheep off the track. They’ll have to check all the trails, and that will slow them down.”

She fumbled on Outrider Lorne’s goggles, thumbed them to heatvision setting and looked back, just before the bend of the road blocked the sight. She saw a slice of the meadow, red-warm from the passage of the herd, the blazing cabin and the mesa. On top of the mesa, running away from her, she saw two human figures. Shad and Cheela.

Five minutes, she estimated. She had five minutes’ head start.

Hopefully, with the sheep trick, she could buy a little more time. Even if she were lucky, it wouldn’t be more than a little.