Erak nodded stiffly and turned away. He had the loophole he’d been looking for. As far as he was concerned, the fact that Ragnak was an insufferable pain in the buttocks was a more than valid reason for not paying taxes on time. Mind you, he might have to find another way of phrasing it when he returned without arresting Sten.
Will came awake with a jerk. He had been sitting on the edge of the porch in the sun and he realised that he must have nodded off. Ruefully, he thought about how much of his time he spent sleeping these days. Evanlyn said it was only to be expected, as he was regaining his strength. He supposed she was right.
There was also the fact that there was so little to do around the hut where they had spent their time since escaping from the Skandian stronghold. He had cleared away and washed their breakfast dishes, then made the beds and straightened the few pieces of furniture in the cabin. That had taken barely half an hour so he had groomed the pony in the lean-to behind the cabin until its coat shone. The pony looked at him, and at itself, with mild surprise. He guessed nobody had ever spent so much care on its appearance in the past.
After that, Will had wandered aimlessly around the cabin and the small clearing, inspecting those patches where the damp brown grass was beginning to show through the snow cover. He had idly considered making some more snares, then discarded the idea. They had more than they needed already. Feeling bored and useless, he had sat down on the porch to wait for Evanlyn’s return. At some stage, he must have nodded off, affected by the warmth of the sun.
That warmth was long gone now, he realised. The sun had travelled fully across the clearing and now the pines were throwing long shadows across the cabin. It must be mid-afternoon, he estimated.
A frown creased his forehead. Evanlyn had left well before noon to check the snares. Even allowing for the fact that they had moved the trap line further and further away from the cabin, she should have had time to reach the line, check the snares and return by now. She must have been gone for at least three hours – possibly more.
Unless she had already returned and, seeing him sleeping, had decided not to wake him. He stood now, his stiff joints protesting, and checked inside the cabin. There was no sign that she had returned. The game bag and her thick woollen cloak were missing. Will’s frown deepened and he began to pace the small clearing, wondering what he should do. He wished he knew exactly how long she had been gone and silently berated himself for falling asleep. Deep down in the pit of his stomach, he could feel a vague uneasiness stirring as he wondered what could have become of his companion. He reviewed the possibilities.
She could have lost her way, and be wandering through the thickly growing, snow-covered pines, trying to find her way back to the cabin. Possible, but unlikely. He had blazed the paths leading to their trap line with discreet marks and Evanlyn knew where to look for them.
Perhaps she had been injured. She could have fallen, or twisted an ankle. The paths were rough and steep in places and that was a definite possibility. She might be lying now, injured and unable to walk, stranded in the snow, with the afternoon drawing on towards night.
The third possibility was that she had encountered someone. And anyone that she ran into on this mountain was likely to be an enemy. Perhaps she had been recaptured by the Skandians. His pulse raced for a moment as he considered the thought. He knew they would show little mercy to an escaped slave. And while Erak might have helped them before, he would be unlikely to do so again – even if he had the opportunity.
As he had been considering these possibilities, he had begun moving around the cabin, collecting his things in preparation for setting out to look for her. He had filled one of their water skins from the bucket of creek water that he brought to the cabin each day, and crammed a few pieces of cold meat into a carry sack. He laced on his thick walking boots, winding the thongs rapidly round his legs, almost up to the knee, and unhooked his sheepskin vest from the peg behind the door.
On the whole, he thought, the second possibility was the most likely. The chances were that Evanlyn was injured somewhere, unable to walk. The chance that she might have been retaken by the Skandians was very slim indeed, he realised. It was still too early in the season for people to be moving around the mountain. The only reason for doing so would be to hunt game. And it was still too scarce to be worth the trouble of fighting through the thick drifts of snow that blocked the way in so many parts of the mountain. No, on the whole, it was most likely that Evanlyn was safe, but incapacitated.
Which meant his next logical move would be to put a bridle and saddle on the pony and lead him along as he tracked her, so that she could ride back to the cabin once he found her. He had no doubt that he would find her. He was already a skilled tracker, although nowhere near the standard of Halt or Gilan, and tracking the girl through snow-covered territory would be a relatively simple matter.
And yet … he was reluctant to take the pony with him. The little horse would make unnecessary noise and a nagging doubt told Will he should proceed with caution. It was unlikely that Evanlyn had encountered strangers but it wasn’t impossible.
It might be wiser to travel unobtrusively until he found out the real state of affairs. As he came to this decision, he stripped the beds of their blankets, tying them into a roll that he slung over his shoulder. It might prove necessary to spend the night in the open and it would be better to be prepared. He picked up a flint and steel from near the fireplace and dropped it into one of his pockets.
Finally, he was ready to go. He stood at the door, taking one last look around the cabin to see if there was anything else he might need. The small hunting bow and a quiver of arrows leant by the door jamb. On an impulse, he picked them up, slinging the quiver across his back with the roll of blankets. Then another thought struck him and he crossed back to the fireplace, selecting a half-burnt stick from the ashes.
On the outside of the door, he printed in crude letters: ‘Looking for you. Wait here.’
After all, it was possible that Evanlyn might turn up after he had left and he wanted to make sure she didn’t go blundering off, trying to find him while he was trying to find her. If she did return, her tracks would lead him back here, eventually.
He took a few seconds to string the bow. Halt’s voice echoed in his ears: ‘An unstrung bow is just something extra to carry. A strung bow is a weapon.’ He looked at it disdainfully. It wasn’t much of a weapon, he thought. But that, and the small knife in his belt, were all that he had. He moved to the edge of the clearing, picking up the clear trail of Evanlyn’s footprints in the snow. They were blurred after a morning of spring sunshine, but they still showed up. Maintaining a steady trot, he moved off into the forest.
He followed her trail easily as it wound up into the higher reaches of the mountain. Before too long, his pace had dropped from the steady jog and he was walking, breathing hard as he went. He realised that he was in poor condition. There had been a time when he could have maintained that ground-eating lope for hours. Now, after barely twenty minutes, he was puffing and exhausted. He shook his head in disgust and continued to follow the footprints.
Of course, following the trail was made easier by the fact that he already had a good idea of the direction Evanlyn had been heading. He had helped her relocate the snares a few days earlier. At that time, he recalled, they had gone at an easier pace, resting frequently so as not to tire him out. Evanlyn had been reluctant to allow him to walk so far, but had given in to the inevitable. She had no real idea how to place the snares where they might have the best chance of trapping small game. That was one of Will’s areas of expertise. He knew how to look for and recognise the small signs that showed where the rabbits and birds moved, where they were most likely to poke their unsuspecting heads into the looped snares.
It had taken Evanlyn about forty minutes to reach the trapline that morning. Will covered the distance in an hour and a quarter, stopping more frequently as the time went on to rest and recover his breath. He resented the stops, k
nowing they were costing him daylight. But there was no alternative. There would be no point pushing himself until he was utterly exhausted. He had to keep himself in condition to give Evanlyn any assistance she might need when he found her.
The sun had dropped over the crest of the mountain by the time he reached the blazed tree that marked the beginning of the trapline. He touched one hand to the cut bark, then turned to head off the track into the pines when he saw something out of the corner of his eye. Something that froze his heart in mid-beat.
There was the clear imprint of a horse’s hooves in the snow – and they overlay the tracks that Evanlyn had left. Someone had followed her.
Forgetting his weariness, Will ran, half crouching, through the thick pines to the spot where the first snare had been laid. The snow there was disturbed and scuffed. He fell to his knees, trying to read the story that was written there.
The empty snare first: he could see where Evanlyn had reset the noose, smoothing the snow around it and scattering a few grains of seed. So there had been an animal in the snare when she arrived.
Then he cast wider, seeing the other set of footprints moving into position behind her as she had knelt, engrossed in the task of re-setting the snare, and probably jubilant at the fact that they had caught something. The horse’s tracks, he had noticed, had stopped some twenty metres away. Obviously, the animal was trained to move silently – much as Ranger horses were. He felt an uneasy sense of misgiving at that. He didn’t like the idea of an enemy who had those sorts of skills – and by now he knew he was dealing with an enemy of some kind. The signs of the struggle between Evanlyn and whoever it was were all too clear to his trained eye. He could almost see the man – he assumed it was a man – moving quietly behind her, grabbing her and dragging her, struggling, back through the snow.
The wild disturbance of the ground showed how Evanlyn had kicked and struggled. Then, suddenly, the struggling had stopped and two shallow furrows in the snow led back to where the horse waited. Her heels, he realised, as her unconscious body had been dragged away.
Unconscious? Or dead, he thought. And a chill hand seized his heart at the thought. Then he shook it away determinedly.
‘No sense in carrying her away if he’d killed her,’ he told himself. And he almost believed it. But he still had that gnawing uncertainty in the pit of his belly as he followed the horse’s tracks back to the main trail, and then in the opposite direction of the trail that led back to the cabin.
He was glad he’d thought to bring the blankets. It was going to be a cold night, he thought. He was also glad that he’d thought to bring the bow, although he found himself wishing that he still had the powerful recurve bow that he had lost at the bridge in Celtica. It was a far superior weapon to the low-powered Skandian hunting bow. And he had the uncomfortable certainty that he was going to need a weapon in the very near future.
The world was upside down and bouncing..
Gradually, as Evanlyn’s eyes came into focus, she realised that she was hanging, head down, her face only centimetres away from the front left shoulder of a horse. The inverted position made the blood pound painfully in her head, a pounding that was accentuated by the steady, bouncing trot that the horse was maintaining. He was a chestnut, she noted, and his coat was long and shaggy and badly in need of grooming. The small area she could see was matted with sweat and dried mud.
Something hard ground into the soft flesh of her belly with every lurching step the horse took. She tried to wriggle to relieve the pressure and was rewarded for her efforts with a sharp blow to the back of her head. She took the hint and stopped wriggling.
Turning her head to face towards the rear, she could make out her captor’s left leg – clad in a long, skirt-like fur coat and soft hide boots. Below her, the churned snow of the trail passed rapidly by. She realised her unconscious body had been slung unceremoniously across the front of a saddle. That projection stabbing dully into her stomach must be the pommel.
She remembered now: the slight noise behind her, sensed rather than heard, and the blur of movement as she started to turn. A hand, stinking of sweat and smoke and fur, clamped over her mouth to prevent her screaming. Not that there had been anyone within earshot to hear, she thought regretfully.
The struggle had been brief, with her assailant dragging her backwards to keep her off balance. She had tried to fight her way free, tried to kick and bite. But the man’s thick glove made her attempts at biting useless, and her kicks were ineffective as she was dragged backwards. Finally, there had been an instant of blinding pain, just behind her left ear, and then darkness.
As she thought of the blow, she became aware that the area behind her left ear was another source of throbbing, another source of pain. The discomfort of being carried along helplessly like this was bad enough. But the inability to see anything, to get a look at the man who had taken her prisoner, was, if anything, worse. From this doubled-over, face-down position, she couldn’t even see any features of the land they were passing through. So if she did eventually escape, she would have no memory of any landmarks that might help her retrace her steps.
Unobtrusively, she tried to twist her head to the side, to get a look at the rider mounted behind her. But he obviously felt the movement, minimal as she tried to keep it, and she felt another blow on the back of her head. Just what she needed, she thought ruefully.
Realising that there was no future in antagonising her captor, she slumped down, trying to relax her muscles and ride as comfortably as possible. It was a fairly unsuccessful attempt. But at least when she let her head hang down, her cramping neck and shoulder muscles felt some relief.
The ground went by below her: the snow churned up by the horse’s front hooves, and showing the sodden brown grass that lay underneath. They were making their way downhill, she realised, as the rider reined in the horse to negotiate a steeper than normal part of the trail at a walk. She felt the rider lean back away from her as she slid forward, saw his feet pushing forward against the stirrups as he leant back to compensate and help the horse balance.
Just ahead of them, visible from her face-down position, was a patch of snow that had melted and re-frozen. It was slick and icy and the horse’s hooves went onto it before she could sound any warning. Legs braced, the horse slid downwards, unable to check its progress. She heard a startled grunt from the rider and he leant further back, keeping the reins taut to still the horse’s panic. They slid, scrabbled, then checked. Then they were across the icy patch and the rider urged the horse back into its steady trot once more.
Evanlyn noted the moment. If it happened again, it might give her a chance to escape.
After all, she wasn’t tied onto the horse, she realised. She was merely hanging either side like a bundle of old clothes. If the horse fell, she could be off and away before the rider regained his feet. Or so she thought.
Perhaps fortunately for her – for she couldn’t see the bow slung over the rider’s back, nor the quiver full of arrows that hung at his right side – the horse didn’t fall. There were a few more steep sections, and a couple of other occasions when they slid, legs locked forward and rear hooves scrabbling for purchase, for several metres down the slope. But on none of those occasions did the rider lose control or the horse do more than whinny in alarm and concentration.
Finally, they reached their destination. The first she knew of it was when the horse slid to a stop and she felt a hand on her collar, heaving her up and over, to send her sprawling in the wet snow that covered the ground. She fell awkwardly, winding herself in the process, and it was several seconds before she could regain her presence of mind and take the time to look around her.
They were in a clearing, where a small camp had been set up. Now she could see her captor as he swung down from the saddle. He was a short stocky man, dressed in furs – a long, wide-skirted fur coat covered most of his body. On his head, he wore a strange, conical fur hat. Beneath the skirts of the coat, he wore shapeless trousers, made
from a thin kind of felt, with soft hide boots pulled up over them, about knee high.
He walked towards her now, rolling slightly with the bowlegged walk of a man who spent most of his time in the saddle. His features were sharp – almond-shaped eyes that slitted to almost nothing from years of looking across long distances into the wind and the glare of a hard land. His skin was dark, almost nut brown from exposure to the sun, and the cheekbones were high.
The nose was short and wide, and the lips were thin. Her first impression was that it was a cruel face. Then she amended the thought. It was simply an uncaring face. The eyes showed no signs of compassion or even interest in her as the rider reached down and grabbed her collar, forcing her to her feet.
‘Stand,’ he said. The voice was thick and the accent guttural but she recognised the single word in the Skandian tongue. It was basically similar to the Araluan language and she had spent months with the Skandians in any event. She allowed herself to be raised to her feet. She was nearly as tall as the man, she noticed, with a slight feeling of surprise. But, small as he was, the strength in the arm that dragged her upright was all too obvious.
Now, she noticed the bow and the quiver, and was instinctively glad that no chance had arisen for her to try to escape. She had no doubt that the man shoving her forward was an expert shot. There was something totally capable about him, she realised. He seemed so confident, so much in control. The bow might have simply marked him as a hunter. The long, curved sword in a brass mounted scabbard on his left hip said that he was a warrior.
Her study of the man was interrupted by a chorus of voices from the camp. Now that she had the time to look, she saw another five warriors, similarly dressed and armed. Their horses, small and shaggy-coated, were tethered to a rope slung between two trees and there were three small tents placed around the clearing, made from a material that looked to be felt. A fire crackled in a small circle of stones set in the centre of the clearing and the other men were grouped around it. They rose to their feet in surprise as she was pushed towards them.