The Lioness

Jeratt’s chest swelled proudly. “I didn’t just keep on. I did what we’d planned, put warriors in the south, and I been back to the dales and roused ‘em there, but … I couldn’t keep it going against Thagol. He’s … he’s like the sea, Kerian. We’re all scattered again.”

Looking from one to the other, the scruffy half-elf and the woman who had only days before spoke in the Court of Thanes, Stanach whistled low. Softly he said, “First time I saw you, missy, you were tripping over a Knight’s corpse on the way out the door. Then you show up in the High King’s court. Now …” He shook his head. “What in the name of Reorx’s forge are you about?”

Kerian looked at him, and the smile she crooked had little to do with humor. “Stanach, I’ve been too long gone from the forest. I will take you so far as where you are safe. After that. .”

Jeratt looked at her, his mouth a thin line. In his eyes, though, she saw hope rising.

Around the basin, men and women stood. Most Kerian knew, a few faces she didn’t. Some were gone: Rhyl, who had not proved trusty; Ayensha, about whom Jeratt said they would later speak; and Elder, who had vanished one day between midnight and dawn.

Old comrades regarded Kerian variously, some pleased to see her, some angry for her sudden departure and return. Newcomers stood with shuttered eyes, waiting. Bueren Rose looked upon her warmly, but a group of strangers eyed her with thinly veiled suspicion. Each of them, four men and the two women, looked to Jeratt to reckon the mood of the occasion. These were the leaders of other bands, other outcasts, highwaymen and robbers. These Jeratt had collected in Kerian’s absence, and no one knew her. News of her, tales of her, these things they knew. In their world, that mattered nothing at all. The deed done at your side, the back watched, the Knight killed who would have killed you—these things mattered. Of these things, they had no experience with Kerian.

She stepped past Jeratt, past Stanach Hammerfell, the dwarf uneasy among all these rough, suspicious elves.

Kerian looked around at them all, all of them cautious. Out the corner of her eye, she noted Stanach. The dwarf stood watching, blue-flecked dark eyes on her. He had come to speak with her king, and he intended to do his errand then return to his thane, that doubting uncle of his who sat upon the throne of the Hylar. In his eyes she saw how far from Thorbardin he felt, and he stood very still in the face of this unwelcoming elven silence, a careful man trying to know whether the ground had suddenly shifted under his hoot heels.

Kerian laughed, suddenly and sounding like a crow. “You!” She pointed to an elf woman standing apart from the others on the other side of the fires. This one, a woman with hair like chestnut, seemed to be the one to whom others deferred. “I am Kerianseray of Qualinesti. I don’t know you. Who are you?”

The woman’s eyes narrowed. Her hand drifted toward the sword at her belt then stilled. “Feather’s Flight, and I don’t know you either.”

“I don’t care. In time maybe you will. Till then, declare yourself, Feather’s Flight, here in my place, with lightning—” a glance toward the dwarf—“and Thunder to witness: Are you here to join me, you and all of yours to take up arms in my cause?”

“Well, I don’t know—”

“You don’t know my cause? You lie! If you have run with Jeratt, you know it. You know my cause is a king’s, and you know—” she reckoned the woman’s age, she counted on old alliances, and she gambled with her next statement—”and you know that the king’s cause is not far different from the cause of the prince whose name is honored by our elders.”

Feather’s Flight cocked her head, her lips crooked a smile. “I’ve run with Jeratt, true. What if I now choose to run away?”

Kerian laughed. “If you gave me your word to go and go in peace, I would let you go.”

The woman hadn’t expected that. She stood like a deer with her head to the wind, trying to understand a sudden, complicated scent. “You’d let me go! I come and go as I please, Kagonesti.”

Kerian shrugged. “There used to be a man named Rhyl with us. He isn’t now. He didn’t turn out to be as trusty as we like our friends to be. If I thought for even an instant you were untrustworthy, Feather’s Flight, you’d be an hour dead, and I’d be talking to someone else.”

Someone laughed, one of those beside Feather’s Flight. Someone else murmured, and Bueren Rose breathed a small sigh of relief as the outlaw stepped forward and stood before Kerian.