Brandark chewed his lip unhappily. “I don’t like leaving her in their hands that long.”
“No more do I.” Bahzell’s face turned grim, and his ears went tight to his skull. “They’ll be after keeping her alive as long as they’ve a hope of getting her home to Jashân, but that’s not to say they’ll treat her well.” The Horse Stealer’s jaw tightened, and then he shook himself. “Well, we’ll not accomplish much while we stand about talking, so-”
He adjusted his sword baldric, and then Brandark blinked as he vanished up the narrow slot of the trail in the ground-devouring lope of the Horse Stealer hradani.
Brandark had heard of how rapidly Horse Stealers could cover ground and hadn’t believed it. But for the first time since leaving Navahk, Bahzell was truly in a hurry, with neither injured women, merchant wagons, nor sick armsmen to slow him, and Brandark had no choice but to believe. He pressed with his heels, urging his horse to a trot, yet he had to ask for a mud-spattering canter, with the long line of horses and mules thudding along behind him, before he could catch up and drop back to a trot. No wonder the infantry of Hurgrum had seemed so baffling to Navahk’s cavalry!
Bahzell turned his head and flashed a grin over his shoulder, then turned his eyes back to the trail before him and loped on into the sunrise with the horses and mules bounding along behind him.
Chapter Twenty-five
Cold wind blew into Brandark Brandarkson’s face. It was the sixth evening of their pursuit, and Tothas’ horse moved wearily under him as the western horizon ate the sun. Shadows stretched inky black with the onset of evening, but Bahzell jogged steadily on like some tireless, questing hound, and Brandark wrapped his cloak about himself and shivered.
Their quarry had, indeed, kept to wild country. They’d also hooked further east than Brandark had anticipated before turning south, and their twisting path had kept them off ridge lines and avoided open stretches. The hradani had made up ground, as Bahzell had predicted, but less than he’d hoped. Their targets were pushing even harder than he’d feared, almost as if they knew-not suspected, but knew -someone was behind them. They were even riding on after nightfall, which took toll of their mounts but meant they regained an hour or two each evening when darkness forced Bahzell to halt.
A stronger gust flapped Brandark’s cloak, and he glowered at the clouds in the east. Rain was bad enough-two days back, a storm had all but obliterated the trail; how Bahzell had held to it was more than Brandark could even guess-but this wind smelled of snow. A blanket of that would hide any trail, even from a Horse Stealer, and-
Bahzell’s hand flew up. Brandark drew rein, and the other animals shuffled to a grateful halt behind him, breath steaming as they blew. Even Zarantha’s mule hung its head without its normal fractiousness, and Brandark frowned as Bahzell swerved off the trail and moved along the flank of a hill. He climbed the slope and knelt to examine something, then stood, put his hands on his hips, and turned slowly. He looked back into the west and then peered into the rapidly darkening east for several minutes, cloak blowing on the wind, before he shook his head and walked back to Brandark.
“What?” Brandark’s voice sounded harsh and unnatural to his own ears after the long silence of the afternoon, and Bahzell shrugged.
“There’s a spot yonder we can camp.” He jabbed a thumb back over his shoulder, but there was an odd note in his voice. Brandark cocked his head, and Bahzell shrugged again. “I’m thinking something new’s been added. We’re not the only ones following those bastards.”
“We’re not?” Brandark’s ears pricked, and Bahzell grunted.
“That we’re not, though who else it may be has me puzzled.”
The Horse Stealer scratched his chin for a moment, then turned back the way he’d come, and Brandark dismounted and followed him, leading Tothas’ horse. Zarantha’s mule pricked its ears and snorted to the other animals as it realized they were headed for a stopping place. Bahzell’s packhorse seemed inclined to lag, but the mule’s sharp nip drove it on while Brandark followed the Horse Stealer into a hollow cut from the hillside by a spring-fed, ice-crusted stream. A small stand of scrubby trees offered fuel, the slope to the east broke the wind, and the spring bubbled out of the hill with enough energy that it hadn’t yet frozen. It was a perfect campsite, but Brandark’s ears flattened as he saw where someone had buried the ashes of a small fire.
He started to speak, then stopped himself and let Tothas’ horse stand ground-hitched while he dug out the picket pins and began driving them into the ground. Bahzell dragged a boot toe through the earth covering the fire, then thrust his ungloved hand into the ashes, grunted, and rose once more, and Brandark looked up from his picket pins in question.
“Cold,” the Horse Stealer said, beginning to remove saddles from their weary animals. “Last night, at least, I’m thinking.”
“Was it theirs?”
“That it wasn’t. They’re after building bigger fires. Besides, there’s been only one horse here.”
“Just one, hey?” Brandark chewed on that while he finished driving in the picket pins, and Bahzell nodded as he led the first horse over.
“Just the one. And whoever he may be, he’s an eye for the land-aye, and one fine horse under him, too.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“I’ve spied his tracks twice today, and there’s a fine, long stride on him. That’s a horse bred to cover ground, and he’s Sothōii war shoes on his feet.”
“Sothōii?! ” Brandark looked up sharply, and Bahzell frowned.
“Aye, and what he’s doing so far south is more than I can say. But whatever it is, the fellow on his back seems all-fired interested in the same folk we’re following. He’s a Sothōii’s own eye for the trail, too-and I’d not be so very surprised if he’s not having a shrewd notion where they’re bound.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because he’s on them like a lodestone on steel.” Bahzell led a second horse over and paused, frowning as he patted the beast’s shoulder. “It’s not just their trail he’s following, Brandark. He’s swung wide of it, not simply come down it as we have, and it’s in my mind he’s cut across more than one loop of it to make up time on them. Either he’s a fiendishly good nose for shortcuts, or else he’s after knowing where they’re headed.”
“But how could he know? And why should anyone else follow them?”
“As for that, you’ve as good a chance of guessing as I do.” Both hradani busied themselves removing pack saddles from the mules in the windy dark, but Bahzell’s ears shifted in thought as he worked. “No, I’ve no notion why he’s following them,” he said at last, “but he is. It’s certain I am of that, yet that’s what has me puzzled. I’m thinking they’re no more than a day ahead of us now, and that fire of his is a day old, at least. So if he’s following, why not catch them up and be done with it?”
“Maybe he has and we just don’t know it yet,” Brandark suggested as he ladled out grain for the animals, but Bahzell shook his head.
“No. If he camped here last night, then he could have caught them up yesterday, so why didn’t he? Why be waiting?”
“Maybe he doesn’t want to take on twenty men by himself.”
“Aye, there’s something in that,” Bahzell agreed, but he sounded dissatisfied. Brandark frowned in question, and he shrugged. “This lad moves like a Sothōii, and unless I’m badly mistaken, it’s a Sothōii warhorse he’s riding. Not a courser, no, but still Sothōii. And if you put a Sothōii on horseback with a bow against such as we’re following-” He shrugged.
“Against twenty men?” Brandark said skeptically.
“Or twice that.” Brandark blinked in disbelief, and Bahzell smiled coldly. “If our lad is Sothōii, this country is just the sort he’d like. He’d be on ’em before they knew it, empty a dozen saddles in a minute, then break off, and that horse of his would ride any three of theirs under if they tried to run him down after. Two or three passes, and he’d have them cut to pieces, and there’s not a way in the world they could be stopping him.”