Part 8 (1/2)

66.

for a while, but probably wouldn't be able to best them both. They would wear her down and kill her before dragging me off for the ransom or whatever they'd decided they could get, and I couldn't let that happen. They were protected against my magic just then, but there's more than one way to use magic.

The proper gesture and word put the long, heavy piece of squared wood into my left hand, and I lost no time in bringing it up and back with alt my strength, catching the man who held me in the side of the head. He grunted at the blow and immediately began falling, nearly taking me down with him before his grip relaxed enough for me to free myself- As soon as I had pulled loose I ran over to the three who were swinging away at each other with swords and did a little swinging of my own, directly at the head of the second bearded man. Su had been swiping toward his middle just then, and when his guard dropped she opened him from side to side. He went straight down to the ground without making any sound, first unconscious and then dead.

The beardless man was left to face Su, and that didn't make him very happy. She had been able to hold off two swords against her own, and once the odds had been evened she went on the offensive. He suddenly found himself defending frantically against an attack that had almost as much strength behind it as his own, and didn't seem quite able to match the speed of it. Su drove him back step by step, and when he tried to disengage and run she didn't allow it. One quick, strong lunge put her point in his chest, and when she jerked it out again he never felt it. He dropped his sword, then folded to the ground, and that was the end of that.

”That was really nice,” I began, moving forward with the block of wood still in my hand, but was interrupted by a commotion coming from the other end of the alley. Su and I both immediately turned that way, sword and wood coming up together, but all it turned out to be was three familiar male figures rus.h.i.+ng up with swords in their hands, one small female figure hurrying along behind them. In- stead of us finding the group, me group had done the finding.

67.

”What's going on here?” Rikkan Addis demanded as the three stopped beside us, all of them looking around at the mess Su had made. ”What happened?”

”Didn't listen when we said to move on,” Su told him.

bending to wipe her weapon on her second opponent.

”Tried to take Laciel along with them, didn't think I'd draw on numbers. Some men are d.a.m.n fools. Good swing with mat wood, girl.”

”My pleasure,” I told her with a smile, gesturing the wood back to the air it had come from. ”Most especially with the one who was still holding me.”

I turned my head to look at my first victim, but all that was left of him was a mark in the scuffed dirt where he'd fallen. He'd probably come around soon enough to find himself outnumbered, and had faded back into the wood- work where his kind came from.

”Did they harm you?” Kadrim demanded from my right elbow, and when I looked back saw that he was talking only to me, a scowl on his smooth, handsome face.

”You must surely be greatly upset from so harrowing an experience.”

”Why would I be upset?” I asked, amused at me way he slammed his sword back into ite scabbard as though disap- pointed that he had no one to use k on. ”It's been a good number of years, but when I lived on the streets this sort of tiling happened all the time- Not to me, of course, but I wasn't worth ransoming back then. And no, they didn't hurt me, just mussed me a little.”

”This wouldn't have happened if you two had stayed with tile rest of us as you were told to do,” Rikkan Addis interrupted with a growl, moving nearer to glare at Su and myself. His weapon had also been returned to its scab- bard, but his bronze eyes glowed with the sharpness of a sword edge. ”Do you know where we'd be if Su had been badly wounded or killed? We'd be without anyone to find the trail for us, and therefore stopped even before we started! We'd be able to turn this expedition around and go crawling back to the wizard on our bellies, beaten by our own stupidity. Didn't that even occur to you?”

By the end of his speech / was me only one those eyes were accusing, his broad face adding to their anger, tight

68.

fists set on hips. Su had been endangered because of me, because I had disobeyed our great, bronze-eyed leader, and that could have meant the end of our quest. Rikkan Addis was a little taller than Su, but that wasn't the reason he was looking down at me. I'd been a bad little girl, and now was being scolded for it.

”Since I didn't set out to get Su hurt, it certainly did not occur to me what might happen,” I came back at him, finding that I'd straightened to my full height, somewhat aware of the absolute silence holding the rest of our group.

”For your information Su's safety is more important to me than just in relation to this quest, and if it came right down to it, I would not have let her get hurt. And even if she was, for one reason or another, unable to follow the trail for us, there would still be nothing to stop me from doing it. Or didn't you know that if I had to, I could bring her abilities under my control? It would not be particularly easy, but I could do it.”

For someone who had had so many words eariier, he seemed to have no immediate response to that. I was standing there and glaring up at him with my own fists on my hips, furious that he'd lecture me like a child, and in front of a crowd of people at that. If it hadn't been possible that Graythor was watching us I would have taken the leaders.h.i.+p from him then and there, but knowing Graythor he probably was watching. Once we pa.s.sed through the first gate, though, he would no longer be able to watch, and that's when I would make my move. Our fearless leader absorbed my justifiable truculence with no more than a thoughtful blink of those bronze eyes, and then he had brushed it all aside.

”What you can or can't do is completely beside the point,” he said in a flat-voiced growl, making the only kind of judgment his sort was capable of, ”We were brought together for a purpose, and wandering around separately, getting into trouble, isn't it. From now on no one leaves this group without my permission, or the worst trouble they'll find will come from my direction. Now, let's get to the horses and back on the road.”