Chapter Ten

TEN

RISP WATCHED CAPTAIN Esthala throw on her cloak and tug her gauntlets from her swordbelt. There was the taste of iron in the air, a pungent aura of panic spreading through the hidden camp. The day was fast drawing to a close, shadows engulfing the spaces between the crags. Esthala’s husband, Silann, had dismounted to help down one of his wounded soldiers. Risp turned and studied the battered troop, seeing faces flushed and faces pale and taut with pain, seeing the blood splashed on most of the soldiers and the tenderness with which they pulled bodies down, and the way the horses stamped and tossed heads in the aftermath of battle. A moment later Esthala walked past her to accost her husband.

‘Have you lost your mind?’ she hissed, but not quietly enough to be missed by the nearby soldiers. ‘This was not supposed to happen.’

He shot her a glare. ‘A caravan. We recognized one of the guards, and for damned certain he recognized us!’

‘What of it? A dozen old soldiers on the trail – that means nothing!’

‘A disbanded unit once more under arms, you mean. And to that old man it meant something. I think even the one commanding those guards had marked us as being in the wrong place at the wrong time. But listen, Esthala, it’s been taken care of. No survivors barring a child who was quick to run off – and who’d listen to a child? The caravan was struck by bandits and that is all.’ His rush of words ended and he stood staring at his wife, his face smeared in dirty sweat.

‘A child escaped you? Go back and hunt him down!’

‘He’ll never survive the hills. No food, no water. The night will probably kill him – he looked no more than six years old. He rode out across a mudflat and lost his horse to it.’

‘Then he should be easy enough to find,’ said Esthala, crossing her arms.

Silann was scowling. ‘I’m not in the habit of killing children.’

‘I will lead a troop if you deem it necessary,’ said Risp, drawing them both around. Fed up with this unprofessional display, where whatever marital problems they possessed continually overwhelmed all propriety, she continued in a reasonable tone, ‘Silann’s unit is all chewed up. They’re tired and they have friends to bury.’

‘And what think you Hunn Raal will say to this?’ Esthala demanded. ‘We’re not yet ready for open bloodshed. You said so yourself.’