The two camps scattered, plucking up their children in the case of the shepherds, while the visitors retreated to Jessup’s wagon and Mod Feeney.
Rainfall sniffed the air and chuckled. “Put away your weapons, Vog. A pile of old coins isn’t worth blood being spilled.”
Vog snorted. “See, men of Lossend! Just like that Praskallian said: ‘Elvish insolence ends at the sight of steel.’ ”
“Sight of steel,” repeated the man with the whirling chain.
Vog and his men took a step closer. “Stop!” Mod Feeney shouted. “This is hallowed ground, of temples old and proud. The gods weep.”
Rainfall drew his thin saber with one hand, detatched his cloak, and whipped it about his arm. “Vog! Remember yourself!”
“You’ve breathed your last insult, elf,” Vog said. “At him, now.”
In later years, Wistala only remembered Rainfall’s lower limbs. He fought as though performing one of the little jigs he did when happy, as on the morning his hair began to grow back in. The power of blocks and strikes came out of his legs and hips, not his arm, extended as stiffly as though it and the blade made one long weapon.
In a flash, Rainfall punched a hole through Vog’s ear. He sidestepped, knelt, and sent his next thrust into the kneecap of the man with the whirling chain. As the second man fell to the side of his injured limb, Rainfall got out of the way of the whirling balls, which wrapped around the man’s helm and went home all about the head and neck.
He fell and did not move again.
Rainfall threw his cloak-wrapped arm around the sword of the next man coming in—Wistala heard a krak! and as Rainfall stepped away, the sword fell and the man clutched his injured limb.
Rainfall rewrapped his cloak about his arm as he put his sword-point before the final pair.
The last two stood shoulder-to-shoulder as they advanced on Rainfall, swords held in both hands in front of them, each urging the other to close and occupy the blood-tipped point while the second finished the job.
Finally one worked up the nerve to raise the sword above his head. With a brave cry he came forward, struck a blow that cleaved the figure before him—
But the figure was Rainfall’s cloak, falling to the ground anyway. Rainfall’s sword penetrated the thick muscle at the attacker’s backside. The second man, seeing his lone ally hop about cursing, thought it best to drop his sword and run.
Vog rejoined the fight with a cry, the side of his head red with blood.
Rainfall parried, parried, ducked out of the way, parried again. Wistala heard the pants of both opponents, but Vog’s was the more labored.
Rainfall spoke next: “Blood has washed away whatever quarrels, old and new, we’ve had. Let us cry ‘settled’ and remember the example of those who built Hesstur’s walls and columns.”
Hooves sounded from the darkness, and two of Vog’s men trotted up, one with the bird-standard muddied. The thane looked around at his wounded, grunting men.
“I’ve been a fool,” Vog said. “I’ll beg your pardon and bury the sword-point.” He plunged his weapon into the dirt.
The riders relaxed atop their horses.
Rainfall nodded and turned. “Mod Feeney, let’s look to the injured.” He wiped his sword on his cloak and resheathed it.
Wistala didn’t like the look of the man Vog, the way he turned to his side and glanced around. So when he sprang forward, a dagger aimed at Rainfall’s back, she was already in motion.
Just before the blade went home, Rainfall twisted—too late. The dagger still plunged in.
Wistala’s dragon-dash had carried her only a third of the way—
Rainfall let out the softest of tired sighs like a man hanging up his hat at the end of a long day. He fell to the earth as Feeney screamed, perhaps at the infamy, or perhaps at the sight of a drakka shooting across the ruins like an arrow.
Vog twirled his dagger. “You forget, star-polisher, that victory’s all that matters in the end. And tonight the victory’s—”
As victory was so important to him, Wistala felt it only right that it should be the last intelligible word to pass his lips. Her spring cut off the rest.
Terror took the horses of the mounted men yet again.
She landed hard atop Vog’s back, sii and saa extended and digging. Vog squeaked, rabbitlike, as she opened him up under the rib cage. She took out a mouthful of neck to be sure of him.
She hurried to Rainfall’s side. “Oh, Fa—Rainfall. Speak!”
His eyes still lived, anyway. They fixed on her. “Dragon-daughter.”
Footsteps. Mod Feeny rushed forward, a pickax held high.
“I’m helping him, you fool,” Wistala said in her best Parl.
She pulled up, still with the point raised, and Wistala made ready to jump out of the way.
But here was Jessup, chasing her down. He put a hand on Feeney’s. “Hold. She’s friendly.”
Rainfall managed to raise his hand. “I still breathe,” he whispered.
“We need to leave,” Wistala said. “Get him on the cart. Don’t forget the coin.” To Jessup: “I’ll meet you back at Mossbell. If there’s a hunt, I’ll confuse them.” A strange clarity had seized her; she had no idea where the words came from, but they flowed steadily. “Gather those horses and that mule there so more may ride. And weapons, that you might overawe any in the village. Vog’s a blackheart and deserves to lose all.”
“I’m not leaving the injured lying in the mud,” Feeney said.
“Then stay and see how your kindness is rewarded.”
Next Stog was there, the bonfire revealing the mud on his sides and the filth about his hooves, a broken rope dangling. “Wistala. Strange fortune brings us together again. Forgive—”
Feeney and Jessup just stared in wonder at the mule, nickering and tossing his head at the drakka.
“No time for words, Stog. Do you wish to return to Mossbell?”
“Is clover sweet? Of course.”
“Then you can do me a favor, and bear a burden back.”
“I’ll carry the master to the icy tundra if I must, and stomp any—”
“No,” Wistala said. “He’s riding in the cart. I want you to carry a cat.”
Stog ended up carrying two cats, Yari-Tab and a night-black female named Jalu-Coke, who had a litter of rambunctious kittens.
“She’s a good friend and a stalking good huntress,” Yari-Tab said. “She hears like a bat. Speaking of which, I’ve seen her leap and bring one down—”
“Fascinating,” Wistala said, forestalling more anecdotes. Once cats got talking about themselves, they’d go on about whisker length or tail-balancing until the sun came up, and she didn’t have that kind of time. Or Rainfall didn’t.
Jessup fixed a thick knit blanket and a bread box on Stog’s back. The cats and kittens rode easily enough.
Rainfall, his shirt bound about his waist, rested in the back of the cart, gripping his leather-wrapped treasures to his chest. He begged them to leave the shepherds’ share of coin.
Mod Feeney was the last to leave the ruins. She bandaged the foemen and spoke many words about how lucky they were to come away with only two dead, and any pursuit would just call up another vengeful fury of red tooth and claw, for the treasure was cursed and only she held the ward-key. Then she hurried down the road after the receding creak of the wagon-wheel.
Wistala watched it all from the ruin-haunted hillside nearest the road. The wounded were helped off to the hovels of the shepherds, leaving the bodies of the two slain men to the rats.
The old milk-eyed rat’s prophecy had come true.
Vog’s men made a pursuit of it that night after all. As Wistala trotted up the side of the road, she heard them a long way off, a faint but growing sound of hooves. If they’d walked or trotted their mounts, they probably would have caught up to the plodding cart anyway, but perhaps the sight of two bodies, one belonging to their thane, had inflamed them into recklessness. Besides, they were armed and arrayed, and their foes humble.
As to the stories of a scaled beast, confused accounts by injured men and shepherd boys watching from afar might make a freak encounter with a channel-back more than it seemed, and as for the warning of the priestess, trumped-up midwives are always making dire predictions.
How the coin figured into their reckoning of risks, vengeance, and rewards Wistala could guess.
She had to delay them. But how?
Improvise, Mother’s voice said to her. She couldn’t outfight the men, or outrun the horses. Horses . . .
Rainfall was right about one thing: the road here was in terrible shape. On the north side of the river, it was trim, dry, and even. Here it was sunken, rutted, and holed, with either side of the verge thick with plants.
Rainfall was right about the washes—a veritable stream cut through the road a little ahead. It had eroded until it was as deep as her neck, almost as treacherous as a troll trap.
Slowing up the men and slowing up their horses were one and the same. Would a troll trap do that?
Wistala went to the wash and placed branches in a grid. Next she tore up twigs and leaves and covered the wash as best as she could. She felt bad for the poor heedless brutes—and the four-legged beasts under them—but they would bring battle.
