CHAPTER FIFTEEN

DERKH groaned as another heavy blow sank into his stomach. His body convulsed, trying to double over despite the bonds that held him upright against a tree. He had been here all morning, left to stand hungry and immobile while the men went about their business. That was bad enough. The interrogation, which had begun after the midday meal, was much worse. For the last hour, maybe two, he had been giving the same answers to the same questions, and Tarkhet’s patience was wearing thin.

“Very soon now I will decide it doesn’t matter whether you are left able to walk, and begin breaking bones. I advise you to think harder this time. Start again with the first battle.”

Derkh spat blood. Somehow the fact that he hadn’t the strength to clear it past his own chin seemed worse than the pain he endured. He felt sick with humiliation as the slimy mess dribbled down his neck. He no longer cared if they found him “loyal to the Empire.” He had resolved, at the beginning of this ordeal, on just one thing: to keep the Elves and Gabrielle out of it. Not that they would believe either story anyway. He made an effort to pull his thoughts together.

“We won the first battle, as you know. Not easily, though. They were waiting for us. Somehow they knew we were coming.”

“How many of them?”

“Far fewer than us. Maybe three thousand.”

“Then why were they not pursued?”

“I don’t know. I told you already, I don’t know.” Derkh braced himself for another blow, but it didn’t come. “I was injured by then, half-dead. I showed you the scar. All I know is we stayed in our camp.”

“For how long?”

“I’m not sure. I was fevered. Not long, I don’t think. Then the camp was attacked by night.”

Tarkhet leaned in, pinning him with cold eyes. “Now be careful what you say. How in eternal night does a retreating army manage an ambush?”

Derkh closed his eyes. He heard again the shouting, saw the confused silhouettes of men running. Felt again Gabrielle’s arms about him before she slipped away. “I don’t know for sure. I couldn’t leave my tent. But maybe it was late-coming reinforcements arriving from another direction. There are four different countries here, you know.”

Tarkhet’s pale eyes narrowed. He hadn’t known, Derkh realized. Well, it wasn’t exactly a state secret. Be damned if he would tell this bugger anything useful, not if he could help it. His loyalties were clear at last. As far as Derkh was concerned the Almighty Emperor could eat dog turds.

Tarkhet nodded. “I’ll accept that for now. Then what happened?”

“They killed my father. Everything seemed confused. I don’t really—”

“ ‘Know anything, because I was injured,’ “ Tarkhet quoted, snarling. “If you was so badly injured, why ain’t you dead? That’s the big question, ain’t it? Too sick to rise from yer damned bed even during an attack, and here you are large as life and flush with good health!”

“I got better,” said Derkh sullenly. That earned him a blow that snapped his head back against the tree trunk and sent the world spinning around him. Blackness bled into the edges of his vision, and he welcomed it.

A pot full of cold water brought him gasping back to daylight.

“The second battle,” Tarkhet prodded. “And don’t whine to me about your bloody deathbed! Let’s say reinforcements did arrive, enough to turn the tide. The fact remains that we sent ten thousand troops over the mountains, and only a handful made it back. Are you telling me they slaughtered ten thousand men?”

Not by half, Derkh thought. He pictured the moment in the first battle when he had realized his side was losing men—conscripts melting away through the edges of the enemy ranks like an outgoing tide. Later he had been stunned to learn that, far from being hunted down and put to death, those men were never even pursued. What had happened to them all, he wondered?

Careful, Derkh. He heard the words like a warning bell in his head, and he heard them, oddly enough, in Féolan’s voice. Yes, he thought. Let them think the Basin armies are formidable and bloodthirsty. Make them think twice about returning.

“They may be fewer,” he whispered. Such an effort it was, to talk against his swelling mouth and the blinding ache in his head. “But they are well equipped and well trained, to a man. They do not send peasants with cast-off swords to fight, but only true soldiers. And it seems,” he added, spinning off into fantasy, “that they have no fear, but love battle and take joy in their killing. None were spared.”

Too late he realized his mistake.

“Right. None were spared,” repeated Tarkhet, each word bitten off and spat out. “So then, my young injured son of the man who botched the invasion—how is it that you stand before me? Why is it you were spared?”

Tarkhet turned on his heel and strode over to the campfire. “He sold us out to save his skin,” he announced flatly. “It’s the only explanation.

“Roust, Sturgus.” Two men scrambled to their feet and stood to attention. Tarkhet jerked a thumb over his shoulder toward Derkh.

“Kill him.”

DARK GODS TAKE the brute! Gabrielle’s stomach lurched as the heavy fist connected with Derkh’s slight body. She heard Féolan’s breath expelled in a curse behind her, felt his warning hand on her back. Steady. They were close enough to hear Derkh’s anguished groan—like when she first met him, she remembered, so determined not to cry aloud with the pain—but how were two to overpower ten?

They had picked up the trail in the early afternoon, not much more than an hour after taking leave of the seskeesh. There were three by then, for the female had left them while Gabrielle slept, and returned with berries, mushrooms and some sort of tuber piled onto a curl of birch bark for her mate. She had been followed by a gangly, nearly full-grown young male who kept a cautious distance between himself and the humans. Their parting had moved Gabrielle beyond words: the way the female had led her to the injured male, awake now and resting comfortably. They had each placed an open palm alongside Gabrielle’s face, the dark leathery skin stretching from her chin to the part of her hair. Gazing at her with their strange deep eyes—two as amber as a cat’s, two the golden brown of brandy—they had spoken their thanks in guttural sounds she didn’t know but seemed to understand all the same. She had laid her own hands, in the same gesture, against their cheeks—downy soft, they were—and then returned to where Féolan waited. But the female had followed them, reached out to stroke Féolan’s shoulder, and when he turned in response, touched his face as well. The wonder in his eyes would be one of Gabrielle’s favorite memories, she knew.

Those eyes now were dark with anger, the flat gray of storm clouds, as they witnessed Derkh’s interrogation.

They had thought the trail they found must have been made by an outpost patrol, who just might have news of Derkh. “They weren’t Elves,” Féolan had said. “Our scouts don’t travel so many together, and in any case would not have torn up the earth so in their passing. I would not have thought it possible to leave such a clear path on this rocky ground.”

“Féolan,” Gabrielle interrupted. “If our soldiers found him, would they not take him for questioning?”

“Yes, quite possibly,” he had replied. “If so, he will at least have shelter and food.”

Gabrielle gasped as the next blow connected with Derkh’s temple. His head lolled; his face, already purple and swollen with contusions, bled freely from the nose and lip. “Féolan, we have to stop this!”

“We’d have a better chance of escaping with him if he can hold on till dusk,” Féolan whispered. “The man is vicious, but he has done no lasting harm yet.”

Gabrielle buried her head in her arms where she lay, forcing back the whimpering protest in her throat. She could not bear to watch this until nightfall.

Suddenly Féolan grabbed the bow that lay beside him and leapt to his feet. “Gabrielle, take this knife.”

“What—?”

“We just ran out of time. Draw your sword as you go. Use it if you need to. Cut Derkh free and give him the knife. Then get out of here, however you can. If you linger, I swear I’ll kill you myself!” He was nocking in an arrow and sighting as he spoke.

SO THAT’S IT then, Derkh thought. Gabrielle might have saved herself the bother for all my life has been worth. The slow stride of the approaching soldiers measured out the distance between himself and his death. He tried to summon up the pride to meet it like a man.

A red star sprouted on Roust’s chest, and he staggered and fell. Scurgus turned to look and pitched to his knees, his sword clattering onto the rock, clutching at his throat. His hands flowed red, and Derkh made out the arrow bristling from below his jaw.

A voice spoke to him from behind the tree. It can’t be her, he thought wildly. But it was.

“I hope you can walk, Derkh, because I’m cutting these ropes. We have to move fast.”

He braced himself against the tree, pressing against it as his legs gave way, and managed to stagger to the far side before they buckled completely. Shouts sounded out now, and Féolan’s bow whistled. It must be Féolan, Derkh thought. Gabrielle was rubbing his legs furiously, working out the numbness.

“Take this,” she gasped, thrusting the knife handle toward him. She stooped to sweep up her own sword, then clasped her free arm around his back, supporting his weight.

“Go!” Féolan shouted, and Derkh heard the unmistakable ring of a sword drawn against its sheath. Staggering like a couple of tavern drunks, he and Gabrielle lurched away.

FÉOLAN HAD MANAGED to down just one more pursuer with his bow before their leader called his men back to take cover. Their opponents’ new strategy left him with little hope: they had divided into two groups and headed in opposite directions, obviously intending to circle wide and under cover and overtake their quarry from two sides at once.

Sprinting to Derkh’s unsupported side, Féolan grabbed the boy’s arm and urged him forward. Impossible to outrun men in prime condition, not with Derkh in the state he was. If it was dark they might lose them, but as it was...they would have to fight. But at all costs, they must avoid a two-pronged attack: Derkh and Gabrielle were no match for trained warriors.

Féolan’s bright eyes scanned the landscape as they struggled through the rough country. He heard the shouts of the men on each side of them, evenly flanking them now. Once they got a little ahead, they would move in. There had to be a place...

He had it. A narrow approach to a tall cliff face: a rockfall of boulders and rubble piled up on one side, a steep scramble of scree pitching down from the other. They would be trapped there, but at least the enemy would be forced to attack head-on. There was no time for anything better.

DERKH SHOOK FREE of Gabrielle. “It’s okay, I’m better now. I can fight.” It was fight or die, as his father used to say, and now he discovered the truth of another of Col’s sayings: need did, indeed, bring strength. He set his legs and found them surprisingly firm.

“Then you’d better take this,” Gabrielle said, handing over her sword. “You’re better trained in it than I.” She looked over at Féolan. “Should I take your bow?”

“Can you shoot it?”

The Greffaires were approaching openly now, Derkh noticed. Cautious, but confident. Who wouldn’t be, he thought dryly, with odds like these? He hefted the sword, getting to know its weight. Lighter than his own had been but beautifully balanced. Wrapping the hilt with the two-handed grip he had been taught, he felt his own confidence take hold. Gabrielle had saved him—again. He would die, and happily, to protect her now.

“I’m better with a bow than a sword. Rosalie gave me some pointers once,” Gabrielle replied. Back when archery was about targets, not lives, and I believed I would never deliberately harm another soul, she thought, and clambered onto a low shelf of rock behind them that would give her clear sight-lines.

“Keep it down until I say. Once you are aiming at them, they will have no choice but to charge.” Féolan’s hand was on his shoulder now. “Ready, Derkh?”

Derkh swallowed. “I’m ready. Féolan, Gabrielle—I have put you in danger. I am sorry.”

“We came of our own free will, Derkh—no blame to you. Now we must save each other.”

No time for more. The men were pounding toward them. The bow sang in Derkh’s ears, and one man checked mid-stride, clutching his shoulder. Then the rest were upon them, and Derkh was fighting for his life against his own people—for his life, and the lives of his friends.