Then he met her eyes, respect in his own. “Better than you look,” he said, appraising her the way he had appraised her sword. “Where’d you learn to fight like that?”
“Fending off bandits in the northern passes of Tilt,” she said. Which was true as far as it went.
“Those must have been some bandits,” he said. “You’ve got the job if you want it.”
She nodded and repeated her original question. “So what’s the cargo?”
“Gold doors,” he replied.
“What? Gold doors? Really made of gold?”
He nodded, laughing. “Heaviest damn things you ever saw. Looks like they’re all carved with flowers and wreaths and whatnot. Worth a fortune, apparently. They were on their way from Storian when they got sidetracked here.”
“A little skirmish on the road,” one of the other men said. “Two of the guards were wounded pretty bad.”
“Which is why we need you,” Orson added.
Wen was still astounded. “But who would want doors made of gold?”
“Rich folk,” the other guard said.
Wen instantly thought of the only rich family in Forten City that she actually had a nodding acquaintance with. Oh, now, that would be ironic even by the standards of her own bitter life—to find herself delivering merchandise to Fortune. “The serramarra?” she asked faintly.
Orson shook his head. “No—some Thirteenth House noble.”
That was a relief, at any rate. Though what were the chances Jasper Paladar would be standing on his front lawn, overseeing the safe arrival of household decor, even if he had ordered such items? “When do we leave?” she asked.
“Tomorrow, early,” Orson said. “You have a place to sleep? There are a few beds in the back of the barn.”
She shook her head. “Got a room. I’ll be back in the morning.”
She was cheerful that night as she ate a solitary meal, paid for a bath, and then spent a couple hours checking all her gear. She always felt better when she had the prospect of action and companionship. Trouble was, she started to feel depressed and edgy if she stayed any one place too long—if she started to get comfortable, if she started to find comrades. You don’t deserve peace and security, some voice in her head would nag. You deserve hard work and a lonely path and constant penance.
So she would move on. She hadn’t spent more than a month in any one place since the war had ended. It was hard to imagine a time she would ever be able to come to rest.
ORSON expected it to take them two days to travel to Forten City, and the trip started auspiciously enough. There were six guards and a driver, decent rations, and clear skies, and by mid-afternoon of the first day, Wen was as relaxed and happy as she’d been in weeks. She and Orson were riding at the front of the small caravan, the slow wagon behind them, and they passed the time trading insults and anecdotes. He still reminded her of Justin—if Justin had aged by ten years and gained a somewhat mellow outlook—but that just helped put her at ease with him. He was the kind of man she understood instinctively, uncomplicated and forthright, ready to brawl at a moment’s notice, not particularly interested in emotional displays, but thoroughly honest. She knew how hard she could push, she knew what skills he would appreciate, and she knew that, once she’d nicked him on the arm, he’d stopped thinking of her as a woman.
All of this was fine with Wen.
For the midday meal, they pulled the wagon to the side of the road, broke out the dried food, and diced for the honor of riding in the lead for the second half of the day. Wen had always had horrible luck at games of chance; she’d learned early never to bet anything she cared about.
“Willa loses again,” crowed one of the other guards, a burly kid named Stef who couldn’t have been more than eighteen. “You’re riding in the rear.”
“Glad to do it as long as you’re up front,” she replied. “Far away from me.”
The driver was glancing around nervously. They were on the main road to Forten City, but this swath of Fortunalt was sparsely settled, and they hadn’t passed any other traffic for an hour. “I don’t like this place,” he said. “Feels too lonely.”
Orson was on his feet and on his horse in a few economical moves. “And we’ve wasted enough time already. Let’s head on out.”
In a few minutes, they were on their way again. Wen and a silent fellow named Carp were riding at the rear. She didn’t mind the lack of conversation, since it allowed her to pay more attention to the road. Winter hadn’t hit here very hard, she noted, for most of the trees and bushes were already starting to show green this early in the season. Or maybe this was just the right time for spring to make its appearance in the southern lands. She had only wandered down to Fortunalt in the past few weeks after months spent in Helven and Nocklyn. The land was unfamiliar to her, and so were its seasons. But if it was always so mild near the southern Houses, maybe she should consider spending more time here.
It would be as good a reason as any to determine where to go when.
The driver was still uneasy, she noted idly, twisting on his seat every now and then to look behind them as if expecting pursuit. She supposed he was the one who had been holding the reins when this same shipment had been attacked a few days ago, which would explain his jumpiness. If I had a job driving pricey cargo around the country, she thought, I’d make sure I knew how to handle a sword. But if he was armed, she hadn’t noticed—and Wen noticed weaponry almost as a matter of course.
If you didn’t know what you were guarding, she thought, the wagon would look pretty ordinary. It was just a weathered wooden cart drawn by two horses. Bits of straw stuck out through the joints; heavy canvas was spread almost flat over the bed of the wagon. But between the straw and the canvas lay the brightly polished gold doors with their intricate whorls and details. Over lunch, they’d pulled back the canvas to admire the top one until the driver got so agitated they covered it up again.
They’d been traveling maybe an hour when she heard the faintest of sounds behind them, and she wouldn’t have caught even that much if she and Carp had been exchanging any conversation at all. She pulled hard on the reins and came to a halt, listening intently. Yes—riders coming at a pretty fast clip, and in a party at least as large as their own.
Her fighter’s instincts prickled with warning, and she had her sword in her hand without consciously thinking about drawing it. “Orson!” she cried out. “Trouble behind us!”
The driver cursed and hauled the horses to a halt, and the other men whirled around, weapons in hand. A few seconds later, the raiding party galloped into view—seven men, all hunched over their saddles, swords at the ready.
This wasn’t going to be like the scuffle at the posting house when she rescued Karryn. This was going to be a fight to the death. No point in holding back. Wen charged forward, low in her own saddle, gaining whatever advantage she could from surprise and momentum. The white gelding was a warrior’s horse, fearlessly flinging himself into battle. They crashed into one of the lead bandits and Wen’s thrust sent the first man to the ground, shrieking and bloody. His horse reared and snorted, trampling him where he lay.
No time to worry about him. She was already under attack from a second raider, and she swung in the saddle to parry a hard blow. Carp and Stef were finally beside her, laying about with their own swords, and then Orson, who’d had the farthest distance to cover, came pounding up. With the first man down, they were evenly matched, at least in terms of numbers. Wen had no idea how good her fellow guards were, if she could count on them to deal their share of death, or if she would have to be responsible for more than the brigand slicing away at her right now. Best to dispatch him quickly and then see which way the battle was going.
Her assailant was huge, practically twice her size, and clearly expecting to demolish her with a high, hard swing. She half parried, half twisted out of his way, and kept traveling forward, burying her sword in his throat. He choked and burbled and clawed at his neck till his eyes rolled back
and his hands fell limply to his sides. She yanked her blade free and spun the gelding around, looking for the next place to strike.
She quickly saw that Orson had cut down his opponent, and Carp was holding his own, but the other guards appeared to be overmatched. “Stef!” Orson shouted at her, pointing, and she kicked her horse forward to aid the boy. With her sword added to his, they quickly routed the bandit. He suffered a hit to the shoulder, one to the knee, another to the head, and loosed a string of oaths. Then he swung his horse’s head around and took off at a hard run, droplets of blood spattering the road behind him.
“Should we follow him?” Stef panted beside her.
Wen shook her head. Protect your charge, Tayse used to say. Don’t pay attention to any of the rest of the action. “We help the others,” she said.
But the others seemed to have matters more or less under control. Of the six guards and seven bandits who had engaged, Wen counted four still battling. There were six bodies on the ground, but only four of them appeared to be dead, and none of the corpses were defenders.
“Go see if you can help any of our people who are wounded,” Wen directed Stef, and launched straight at the remaining fighters.
Just the threat of another blade against them seemed to decide the brigands. One called out to the other, and they both pulled back and turned tail. Orson chased them for twenty yards down the road, but, like Wen, he was more concerned with keeping his cargo safe. He trotted back to the scene of battle and surveyed them all from horseback.
Wen was already kneeling in the dirt and rifling through the pockets of one of the fallen men. “Not much to find here,” she called up to him. “Not wearing any House colors, and they look too ragged to be paid mercenaries. Just outlaws, looking to steal our wagon.”
He nodded but didn’t answer her directly. “Who’s wounded and how badly?” he raised his voice to ask.
“Fibbons and Jack are hurt, but Jack’s not too bad off,” Stef replied. His voice sounded strained. Wen wondered if this was the first time he’d seen true bloodshed. “But Fibbons has passed out.”
Orson glanced down at Wen again. “You any good at fixing up folks who got hurt fighting?” he asked. “Since you’re so good at fighting?”
She almost smiled. “I’m better with bones than bleeding.”
Carp stirred and dropped from his horse. “I know a little about medicine,” he said. “I’ll see what I can do.”
Orson looked over at Stef now. Wen watched him read the boy’s face, try to determine how much more he could handle. “Stef, you plant yourself right in front of the wagon,” Orson said, his voice matter-of-fact. “You be our lookout in case one of those fellows comes back. Willa, I guess it’s up to you and me to drag these bodies out of the road.”
She nodded and stood up to tug her gloves back on. She’d pulled them off to make it easier to go through the dead men’s pockets. When Orson was dismounted and standing next to her, she said in a low voice, “You really think they might come back?”
He shook his head. “Only three of them left, and at least two of them were hurt pretty badly,” he said. “We’ve got four men who are completely whole—and you and I, at least, can fight. Unless there’s a lair of them not too far away, I can’t think they’d come back for a third try.”
“A third?” she said swiftly. “You think it’s the same group that attacked the wagon before?”
“Wouldn’t be surprised. Could have been following this shipment all the way from Storian. If you’re going to steal something as unwieldy as a gold door, you better have an idea what you’re going to do with it. I’m thinking it’s a bit too much trouble for your average thief who just wants a quick bounty.”
She nodded and bent over to pick up the legs of the first dead man. Orson grabbed the man’s arms and they half dragged, half carried the lifeless figure off the road.
“You have a lot of trouble with bandits in these parts?” she asked him when they’d dropped the body.
He shrugged and smacked his hands together as if to rid them of the dead man’s taint. “Things have been unsettled ever since the war,” he said. “Lot of good men died following Rayson Fortunalt to Ghosenhall. Lot of men refused to sign up for his war, and some of those folks found themselves stripped of their positions and their properties. Hard times came to Fortunalt and haven’t really let up since.”
Wen gave him a sharp look. “Are you one of those who wouldn’t turn rebel against the king?”
Orson shrugged again. “Been a soldier my whole life, one way or the other. I left Forten City five years ago, when it started to look like war might come. I ended up fighting anyway, but I was in Ariane Rappengrass’s army. Came back here a year or so ago, but the work hasn’t been too steady. I keep thinking things will turn around for Fortunalt, so I stick.” He made a small motion with his hands. “So far, not much improvement.”
She turned to collect the next body, and he followed her. “What about you?” he said.
She grunted a little as she lifted the corpse’s legs. This was the big man that she’d cut down; it would be a hell of a job to move him five inches, let alone five yards. “I told you. I come from Tilt country.”
“Well, maybe originally,” he said. “But you got training somewhere else when you learned to fight like that.”
Like him, she shrugged, certain he wouldn’t press too hard. Among people of their kind, it was just expected that there would be episodes in your past you would prefer not to discuss. Justin, for instance, had lived on the streets of Ghosenhall as a common street thief until Tayse found him. “Did some guard work here and there,” she said. “I fought in the war, too, but I was on the side of the royals.”
“Any sane man would have been,” he said, and almost threw the big man’s body down when they were off the road. Then he grinned at her again. “Or sane woman.”
She crouched over the body and motioned Orson down, as if to show him something interesting on the big man’s clothes. When he squatted beside her, she murmured, “I’m not so sure these were random outlaws. I’m wondering about our driver.”
Orson’s eyes gleamed, but he was too canny to suddenly twist his head around and stare at the wagon. “Why?” was all he said.
“Just a feeling. He seemed so edgy. He didn’t like us lingering over our meal. I think he might have made plans with this particular party to meet us at a certain point on the road.”
Orson was silent a moment. “Hard to prove.”
“I know. But two raids on the same wagon in three days? Only makes sense if they followed it all the way from Storian—or if the driver was giving information about his route.”
“Well, let’s get the rest of these fellows onto the grass, and then ask our driver a few friendly questions.”
They finished clearing the road within ten minutes, then checked on the status of their hurt companions. Jack was up and walking around, cursing and flexing his sword arm, but Fibbons was still woozy.
“Is there room for him to lie down in the wagon?” Wen asked.
“Don’t want to dent the doors,” Orson said.
“Well, couldn’t he lie next to them?”
It took a little effort, but they were able to reposition the cargo and make a narrow lane of space so the hurt man could lie on the straw. Orson stepped back and gave Wen a meaningful look before saying, “I’m starting to wonder how many more times this particular load might be attacked before we get to Forten City.”
“Better not happen again,” Carp muttered.
Orson turned deliberately to the driver. “What do you think? Hey? We likely to have to fend off thieves another time? Some more of your friends, maybe? I’m wondering just how much you know about all these attacks.”