Moving Targets and Other Tales of Valdemar

:We were sent with them to keep them safe. Safe does not include tracking armed raiders through hill country at night. I know her heart is willing, but ...: Underbrush pulled at his boots. Gervis was larger than the horses they followed and was breaking a path a blind man could see. :We’ll bring them a story with a happy ending. That’ll have to do.:

When they emerged into one of the long ridges of rock that ribbed through the hills, the sky was a deep sapphire blue, and long, dark shadows hid the trail. Jors dismounted and found a scar where a hoof had scraped lichen off rock. :Southeast:

He nearly missed the point where they left the rock to go east again, but Gervis caught the scent of fresh blood, and a spattering not yet entirely dry showed the way.

:I smell smoke.:

:They must have lit a fire. They’ve made camp, then, and we’re close.:

The camp, when they found it, looked almost familiar. Jors checked his mental maps. Unless they’d traveled a lot farther from the village than he thought, they were still some distance from the border, but there was no mistaking the pattern of fire and picket line and the way the weapons had been set, butts to the ground, points crossed.

:They’re army, or ex-army. Hardorn lancers.: Bow in hand, he moved closer carefully. :I’m betting some bright officer came up with a way to use their troublemakers to their advantage. It’s why they took the girl. Why they’ll want their man back so badly. I bet their first order was not to get caught.:

:I don’t see the girl.:

:Neither do I. We have to get closer.:

He lifted a foot and set it down again as a rough voice growled, “I may miss you in this light, but I’ll not miss the big white horse. You keep him calm and you do what I say, and you might just survive this.”

:Gervis?:

:Crossbow bolt up in under my jaw. Point touching skin.:

Companions were fast and moved in ways a man seeing a horse wouldn’t expect. But were they faster than a finger tightening around a crossbow trigger? Jors couldn’t risk that.

:How did he move in so close?:

:I don’t think he moved in, I think we stopped right beside him.:

Not so much ex-army that they didn’t have a man on watch.

“Let me kill him, Adric.”

“He’s a Herald, you idiot.” Torso bare but for streaks of blood and a field dressing on his shoulder, Adric scowled down at Jors, who struggled up onto his knees. With Gervis’ life in the balance, he’d walked into the camp and been slammed to the ground with the butt of a lance. The point of that lance was now centered in his chest. “Kill one and they all come down on you.”

“Then we tie him and leave him here,” the first man grunted. “Take the horse with us, probably get a pretty penny for it.”

:Chosen!:

:I’m okay.: More or less. :You?:

:He hasn’t moved the bow away.:

They might not understand what a Companion was, but they’d dealt with Valdemar enough to know Jors wouldn’t provoke the shot.

“We’re not,” Aldric growled, “going anywhere without Lorne.”

“And that’s why we have the girl.”

Eyes adjusted to the firelight, Jors could see her now, sitting on the ground with her knees drawn up, gaze locked on his face. Fifteen maybe, no older, on that cusp between girl and woman. She looked frightened but determined. A boy, not much older, stood behind her, arms crossed, and a man with his breeches cut away and a bloody dressing on his thigh—the man who’d spoken—reclined beside her.

“Not the only reason, mind you,” he added reaching over and lightly smacking her cheek.

Bardi jerked away from his touch, provoking a shove from the boy behind her, but as near as Jors could tell, it hadn’t yet progressed beyond touching and threat. They’d got there in time and had provided, if nothing else, a distraction. Now, they just had to get away.

He’d seen six of the eight men—Adric, obviously their leader, the one who spoke first, the one with the lance, two by Bardi, the one with the crossbow on Gervis. The other two had to be behind him, but the point of the lance kept him from turning to make sure.