"I'll take her price out of your first pay," Led told Onyx. Adjusting a strap, he laced his fingers and held them out to boost her onto the back of the horse. "She's a nice piece of flesh. Her coloring suits you, too." Onyx placed her left foot in Led's hands and swung her right leg over the horse with great difficulty, unused to maneuvering in the cumbersome armor.
Led watched her clumsy handling of the beast with sur shy;prise. "Surely you haven't traveled entirely by foot all your life?"
"Not by foot, no," Onyx said. The mysterious glint in her eye suggested her magical abilities. Led looked properly impressed.
"I've got to check on a special order the cartwright's been promising me," he told Onyx after watching her first awk shy;ward attempts to ride the mare. Promising to return in short order, he left her to her own struggles in the paddock.
Onyx was relieved to see the backside of his long-legged stride so she could practice without his green eyes on her. Used to being a mount of a sort to the lightweight nyphids, she did not like the feeling of sitting on a horse one bit. The ride was jarring, not smooth like flying. More disturbing to Onyx, though, was the idea of turning control of herself over to an animal not half as intelligent as she.
Slowly, she learned to control the animal instead of allow shy;ing it to control her. Her shoulders ached from the effort to direct the animal, as well as the weight of the armor. The sun had risen past the midpoint, and the mare beneath her had churned the paddock to ankle-deep mud by the time a now-helmeted Led returned on horseback himself.
To her surprise, he was accompanied by his entire band of ogres and flanked by Toba, who sat upon the buckboard of a small, windowless box of a wagon, reins in hand. Khisanth sprang from the mare's back and led the creature by the leather bridle through the paddock gate.
"Yoshiki Toba, Onyx," Led said simply by way of intro shy;duction. "She's our new hand." Led's lieutenant eyed her willowy, muscular form skeptically, but said not a word. Obviously adding a woman warrior to their ranks was noth shy;ing new. Onyx wondered at Led's reasons for not telling Toba of her spellcasting abilities, but she knew she had already strained Led's tolerance for questions.
"You're doing better on the horse," Led observed. "Just in time, too."
"We're leaving now?" Onyx glanced from the last ranks of ogres up to the small wagon behind Toba.
Led pushed back the helmet he'd donned since she'd last seen him. "Any problem with that?"
"No!" she said quickly, her mind racing. How will I tell Kadagan and Joad I'm leaving? I don't even know where I'm going! "I was just surprised, is all."
"Me, too," said Led. "That fool cartwright has been string shy;ing me along, taking a month to build this little wagon, if you can believe that."
"What kind of cargo requires a wagon specially made for it?" she asked artlessly.
"Something thaf s going to make me rich, once I get it to its new owner in Kernen," he said with a mysterious smile, then wagged his finger. "You've forgotten rule number one again, Onyx." Led dropped his helmet back over his face. "Take the right flank, and make certain you remember rules two and three." With that, he gave a shrill whistle and circled his arm once over his head.
The group set off for the southeastern gate. Onyx had to spur the horse to a trot to gain her place on the right of the wagon, opposite Led.
Once outside town the small train turned toward the mountains. Thin woods lined the road, thickening as the way led farther from town. Aside from an occasional sneeze or curse from one of the ogres, the group was silent. Onyx won shy;dered whether Kadagan and Joad were watching from some shy;where. If Dela was in the strange wagon Toba was driving,
surely Joad would know. If she wasn't-I'll deal with that if it turns out to be true, thought Khisanth.
They established a steady pace, headed through the foothills, toward a place Led called Needle Pass, the only siz shy;able gap through the Khalkist Mountains within a hundred miles. The gray clouds had been chased from sight by a strong, chill wind. Onyx swayed in her saddle with each of the mare's steps up the steep, rocky incline. She tried repeat shy;edly to listen for any sound from the wagon, but her keen hearing revealed nothing.
After a short time on the trail, Onyx's entire body ached. She concentrated on the horse's mane, let the color and tex shy;ture absorb all her thoughts. Slowly, the pain in her legs diminished. The weight of the armor no longer strained her back or curved her spine.
Hawks cried out as they circled above the lumbering party. The wagon's wheels creaked and rumbled over the frozen ground, occasionally crunching a rock or shattering a frozen puddle. Led's horse was perfectly abreast of the two that pulled the wagon under Toba's direction. The human's face was impassive, eyes always scanning ahead, his posture in the saddle ramrod straight.
Hours later, as the sun slipped over the western horizon, Led chose a campsite. The spot lay near a small pool that was constantly fed fresh water from a swiftly flowing mountain stream. Led gave a shrill whistle. The wagon rolled to a stop next to Onyx, the ogres behind it. Toba jumped from the buckboard and began firing off orders. The ogres established a makeshift camp in the narrow clearing, digging fire pits with their claws, while Led's lieutenant unhitched the wagon and posted himself as guard over the precious cargo. While Toba was about, there would be no examining the cart to see if Dela were inside.
Led sprang from his saddle and stepped around the wagon to help Onyx from hers. He settled the woman atop a large rock, then fished around in his leather pack. "Jerky?"
He held out a red-brown shriveled strip that looked like animal hide picked clean and left too long in the sun. She hes-
itated, not sure what to do with it.
"Better eat while you can," he said, holding it closer to her. Led tore off a piece of the jerky and chewed it vigorously. "It'll be a while before Toba gets a fire started and any food cooked."
He noticed then that the woman was watching the ogres, who towered over the shouting Toba. "You may not think they look like much, but you wouldn't believe where we started with them. No organization at all. None of them could even wield a club with any accuracy. They relied mostly on crushing opponents to death." He looked appre shy;ciatively at their ten-foot frames. "Not a bad technique, either, when you think about it."
"Why do they work for you?" Onyx asked. She watched the wiry Toba strike a violet-colored ogre with a club. The creature dug marginally faster, a vicious snarl erupting through its pointy green teeth.
"I killed their chieftain." Led took a long pull on a wine shy;skin that hung from a frayed string on his right shoulder. "They hated him," he continued, wiping his mouth on the back of his fringed leather sleeve. "Blogrut was even greedier than most ogres, driving them hard, feeding them little, and giving them less than nothing of what meager booty they managed to find.
"We make sure that they're fed regularly, and that each of them gets some bit of treasure now and then, even if it's just a shiny button." He ducked his head through the wineskin string and handed the leather bag to Onyx. "They're as loyal as any human troops, so Toba and I sleep in shifts."
Within minutes the ogres had scraped out fire pits, gathered wood, and started several fires: large ones for warmth and a smaller one for cooking.
Led pulled some thick blankets from his saddle pack and tossed one to Onyx. "Unless you can sleep through an ogre's snoring, you'll want to bunk down here by my fire." He dropped his blanket and settled to the ground, leaning against the soft bundle. As Onyx did the same, Toba stepped up with three steaming platters of brown stew.