CHAPTER TWO

Tracks

Aspar knelt by the still-smoking ashes of the campfire and growled in the back of his throat.

“What’s wrong?” Stephen asked.

The holter didn’t look at the boy but stood and surveyed the clearing again. “They didn’t try to hide their sign,” he grunted. “They didn’t even stop the embers smoking. They led us right here.”

“Maybe they don’t imagine we’re following them. It’s been nearly a month.”

Indeed, they’d left d’Ef in the hottest days of Sestemen, but they were now well into the month of Seftmen. The leaves were already touched with autumn color, even here in the lowlands, where pasture and farmland cut up the King’s Forest. Aspar simply hadn’t been able to keep the pace needed to catch the monks early on. He was stronger now, though he still didn’t feel quite himself.

“They know we’re after them,” he said. “Make no mistake.” He fitted an arrow to his bow, one of the four that remained. The others had broken in hunting.

“You think—” Stephen began, but in that moment Aspar smelled the ambush. Two men were racing from the trees behind them. Stripped to the waist, they were heavily tattooed on their shoulders and chests, and they bore broadswords. They were running faster than men ought to be able to run.

“That’s Desmond’s men!” Stephen shouted. “Or two of them.”

“Mount,” Aspar shouted, leaping onto Ogre and digging in his heels. The big horse jolted into motion. The men split, one headed toward Stephen and one keeping a course toward Aspar.

Aspar stood in his stirrups and turned, sighting down a shaft at the one attacking Stephen. Ogre wasn’t quite settled into a stride, but Aspar couldn’t wait. He released the dart.

The arrow flew true, or almost so, striking the monk in the kidney. He fell, giving Stephen time to get up on Angel, but came back to his feet with absurd speed.

Meanwhile, incredibly, the other monk was gaining on Ogre. Grimacing, Aspar fitted another arrow to his bow and shot it, but just as he did so Ogre leapt a downed log and his shot went high and wide.

Now he was down to two arrows.

He yanked on his reins, spun the horse around, and aimed him right at his pursuer, staring down the shaft at him. He saw the man’s face, set and determined, and as mad as one of the Raver’s berserks. He aimed for the heart.

At the last instant, the monk threw himself aside, so the arrow buried itself in sod. He cut viciously at Ogre’s legs as he tumbled past, but the horse avoided the blow by whiskers. They thundered by, back toward Stephen, whose wounded attacker was nearly on him. He was bleeding freely, but that seemed only to have slowed him a little. Fortunately, he was so intent on the boy that he didn’t notice Ogre until it was too late, until the beast’s forehooves had crushed his skull.

Aspar wheeled again, taking out his last arrow and leaping down from the beast.

“Ogre,qalyast! ” he shouted.

Ogre immediately charged the monk, who set himself grimly to meet the horse. In that instant of relative stillness, Aspar shot him in the center of the chest.

The monk spun with the blow, avoiding Ogre as he did so, and ran past the horse toward Aspar. Cursing, Aspar turned and lifted the dead man’s sword. It wasn’t a weapon he knew a lot about—he wished he had his dirk and ax—but he held it at guard and waited. Behind him, he heard Stephen drop to the ground.

The monk was on him, then, cutting fast and hard toward Aspar’s head. Aspar gave ground, but not enough, and had to bring the heavy weapon up to parry. His shoulder jarred as if he’d just stopped thirty stone falling from a tower. Stephen came in from the right, swinging his farm tool, but the swordsman turned and neatly hacked through the wooden shaft. Aspar swung clumsily, and the monk danced aside, feinted, and cut. Aspar leapt inside the swing, dropped his own weapon, grabbed the sword arm with his left hand, and punched the monk in the throat. He felt cartilage crush, but his opponent kneed him viciously in the chest, hurling him back and to the ground, empty of breath. The monk staggered forward, lifting his sword, just as Ogre hit him from behind. He fell, and Ogre kept stamping him until his hooves were red and the corpse wasn’t twitching.


“They could have killed us if they’d been a little smarter,” Aspar said, when he got his wind back. “They were overconfident. Should have ignored us and gone straight for Ogre.”

“Contemptuous is more like it,” Stephen replied. “Those were two of the pettiest of Spendlove’s bunch—Topan and Aligern. Spendlove himself would never be so stupid.”

“Yah. I maunt he sent the men he could most afford to lose. Even if they’d got only one of us, it would have been a bargain. He should’ve given ’em bows.”

“Those who walk the faneway of Saint Mamres are forbidden to use bows,” Stephen remembered.

“Well. Thank Saint Mamres in your prayers, then.”

They stripped the corpses, and to Aspar’s satisfaction found a fighting dirk not unlike his own lost one. They also found a few silver tierns and enough dried meat and bread for a day, all welcome additions to Aspar and Stephen’s meager possessions.

“I reckon that leaves about six of them,” he mused, “and however many Fend brings. Let’s hope they keep sending them two at a time like this, so we can keep evening the odds.”

“I doubt Spendlove will make the same mistake twice,” Stephen said. “Next time, he’ll be sure.”

“Next time could be anytime. These two might have just been to lull us. We’re riding out of here, right now, and not the way they’ll expect. We know where they’re going, so we don’t need to trail them.”

Once they were mounted, Aspar chuckled.

“What?” Stephen asked.

“I notice you aren’t arguing we bury these, like you did those last.”

“A holter’s burial is good enough for them,” Stephen said.

“Werlic,” Aspar allowed, “at least you’ve learnedsomething .”