Savage Empire

Pretending he hadn't noticed anything, he walked away, Reading the two men flitting through the crowd, following him at a safe distance. Together? Yes. Very well. He Read crowds in several streets radiating from the forum-mustn't get caught in a deserted area. Reading the men trailing him, he wove through the crowd to get out of their sight, ducked into a side street until they had passed, and came out behind them. Then he eluded their search in the crowd, and escaped through Northgate just as the strangers' bell rang. Soon the gate was closed behind him for the night, the thieves remaining in Zendi.

For some time, Lenardo walked among people returning home from a day's business in Zendi. The crowd gradually thinned, until he walked alone again. He located a sheltered spot well off the road, ate a piece of fruit, and lay down to sleep.

With a Reader's discipline, Lenardo was able to put himself into a light sleep from which he would awaken at any disturbance. It was a troubled sleep, as he usually slept on his right side; each time he would truly fall asleep he would try to turn over, sending waves of pain through his sore arm. By morning it was badly swollen, his right hand stiff and clumsy.

Still very tired, he set off along the road again, now in territory completely strange to him. It was more of the same-fields, peasant huts, squalor and misery. He felt a kinship with the landscape.

He stopped to bathe his arm and spread ointment on it, but the pain just from doing that was almost too much to bear. He drank feverishly at the brook and staggered back to the road for a few hours. By early afternoon, he knew he could go no further.

There was medicine for fever in his pack, an opiate that dulled the physical senses and sent the mind roaming in precarious realms. He dared not use it unless he were safe, where nothing could disturb his body. On the road, there was no such place.

There were hills off to his right, however. He had a full skin of water, food, and medicine. If there was a cave in those hills where he might hide for a night and a day…

When he left the road, he found it even harder to walk. His head seemed to lift from his body, then return with a stabbing pain. Twice he fell, dragged himself up again, and continued his nightmare journey. At one point he was seized with teeth-chattering chills, but most of the time he was in a clammy sweat.

His vision became distorted, and as he tried to Read both the way he walked and the surrounding countryside, the two perceptions blurred into confusion. He had to concentrated on his own steps, narrowing in to force one foot to follow the other…

How long he traveled thus, he didn't know. He had reached the lower slopes of the hills and was clambering over a rocky outcropping when he suddenly Read people- savages-all around him.

Alert, he could have avoided them. As it was, they were upon him, hill bandits on helpless prey. He only half understood what they were saying.

"An exile."

"No one will be looking for this one."

"They always have good clothes, sometimes money."

Then harsh hands grabbed him, and laughter rang out as he howled in pain, trying to shake them off, reaching for his sword with numbed fingers that scrabbled at the hilt. More laughter as he was disarmed, his cloak ripped away, his arms twisted behind his back, forcing another scream from him.

He was staring into the face of a man perhaps his own age, but the face was bearded, the mouth open to show teeth missing, and those present black with rot.

"What have you got, exile? What can you give us for your life?"

"Nothing," Lenardo gasped, knowing they wanted him to grovel and plead before they killed him anyway.

The bandit hit him in the stomach. Gratefully, Lenardo blacked out. He came to with the pain of someone twisting his branded arm again. "Beat him," the. bandit instructed, and while two held him, others punched and kicked at him, ever careful to keep him conscious. Against the pain in his arm, the blows hardly registered. Hanging limp between the bandits, he waited for death to release him from pain.

Suddenly he was dumped to the ground, stripped of scabbard, boots, money pouch. Then one of the bandits felt under his shirt and pulled forth the amulet old Quintus had given him.

There was a gasp. The bandits dropped Lenardo and the amulet as if both had become red-hot.

"The wolf-stone!"

"Aradia!"

They scattered like startled birds, disappearing into the hills. Lenardo tried to sit up. They had taken everything, leaving him weaponless, without even boots to protect his feet from the rocks or a cloak to wrap up in against the night. He needed water, but they had taken the water-skin too.

He tried to Read around him, not moving. There must be a spring somewhere in these hills. He was deathly thirsty, and he had to clean the wound on his arm, where the bandits had burst the blisters with their filthy hands.