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  Far ahead, off to one side of the road and silhouetted against the smoky night sky, loomed a large heap of boulders. The frantic shouts of the trailing band of Bashye warriors spurred her on. If the lord marshal’s warhorse had not been weary from the long journey, and wounded besides, the Bashyes’ smaller desert horses would never have kept pace. Her ill-fortune was their blessing.

  Knowing what she had to do, but not liking it in the least, she jammed her heels into the horse’s flanks. The mount surged ahead, its great lungs laboring for each new breath. As the rocks grew closer, the Bashye fell farther behind. She would have to trust in the darkness … and hope that the horse would not do what it was trained to do. With no time to fret over that, she kicked her feet free of the stirrups and cradled her short bow protectively to her breast. When the time was right, she rolled out of the saddle, tucking head and legs.

  The shock of the hitting the hard ground was more than she had expected, and her breath gusted from her chest. Desperation made her hold tight to her bow, as would a mother protecting her infant. She was up and running before she had time to register any pain, or rejoice that the horse had continued on, instead of halting to defend its rider against the enemy.

  Within a few steps, she knew there was something wrong with one of her knees, for her run quickly became a lurching stumble. The battle cries of the Bashye grew closer. She ducked behind a large boulder just as the band of warriors passed. In the darkness they were flashing shadows, but still she tried to count as they sped past.

  Six! she thought with dismay. She had hoped there were only three or four. That there was nearly twice that meant she had not killed as many of the bloodthirsty renegades as she had believed. There was no point in fretting over numbers that would not change … unless she changed them with arrows from her bow.

  After she caught her breath, she started climbing up through the boulders. She had to get to high ground before they discovered that she was no longer riding the horse they pursued. The agony in her knee became worse with every step, swollen stiffness setting in faster than expected. She almost laughed at that. Better had the pain not come at all, better if she had never left the Isle of Rida nine years gone. Knowing she could afford the luxury of feeling sorry for herself only if she survived the night, she pressed on.

  The higher Ellonlef went, the steeper and harder the ascent became. In the stillness of the night, she paused on the rough curve of a boulder, biting her bottom lip to stifle a whimper of agony. Her knee, along with gods knew how many other scrapes and bruises, pulsed with her heartbeat. But the knee was by far the worst. Without the ability to move easily, her chance of seeing another dawn as a free woman grew slim indeed.

  She ran cautious fingers over the bulge under her dusty robes and hastily pulled back. Breathing hard, she continued to search out other, less grievous wounds. There were dozens of small, painful lumps that told her what she already knew-jumping off a galloping horse was only advisable when the alternative was enslavement or death at the hands of the Bashye. Still, she felt confident that she had suffered no broken bones. Another quick check told her the dagger sheathed on her hip was secure, and the arrows in their quiver were, all save one, unbroken. Such was a small miracle in and of itself.

  Ellonlef tested her weight on the bad leg and nearly screamed.

  “Gods good and wise,” she hissed after she caught her breath. At that moment, she would have happily carved out the living eyes of every one of the filthy bastards hunting her. Not out vengeance, but because of their sheer, blind stupidity. The world and the heavens above were coming apart, yet the single-minded fools still persisted in hunting down anyone they thought weak enough to easily defeat and rob. But such was the way among the loose-knit bands of outcasts, brigands, and traitors who shared no common ancestry, save unto themselves.

  “But I was no easy prize, was I?” she growled into the night, mortified by the hatred in her heart.

  The Bashye had come at her soon after she left the outpost Oratz, many leagues north of Yuzzika. It had taken them little time to kill off her string of reserve mounts, and set her to galloping north. She could not say how many hours past that had been, but it felt an eternity. Briefly, the horrors that had waited at both Yuzzika and Oratz filled her mind, despite her desperate need to seek higher, safer ground.

  Even now, days after seeing the first strew of flyblown corpses in and around Fortress Yuzzika, she shuddered in revulsion. She had initially believed some great battle had ensued, leaving corpses sprawled everywhere. After that, she guessed that jackals and other carrion eaters must have swooped in to feast on the remains. All along the road north, she had held this belief, until finally reaching Oratz, where her presumption had been devastated.

  The inhabitants of Oratz had not perished long before she arrived. The dead there, scattered over the ground outside the walls, had all died the same way. Each to the last had shown many wounds, but what had killed them were ragged gashes to their throats. And the way that blood had poured from those gruesome rents, leaving behind wide fans and pools of drying blood, she understood that the wounds had been inflicted while the men’s hearts were beating-

  A faint noise drew Ellonlef’s attention to the north. She cocked her head, trying to hear over her thudding heart. Her fear grew at the sound of many hooves beating against the roadway, coming nearer. Though she had known the foolishness of hope, some small part of her had believed she would escape.

  She swiped angry tears from her eyes and resumed her climb up the small mountain of boulders. She vowed to open her own veins before letting the Bashye turn her into a broodmare, but before that she would make them suffer-just as she had suffered at their hands since they beset her. Vengeance was not a part of her nature, but a sense of justice demanded that the Bashye pay for their assault against her, and no doubt countless others before her. Whether the world was coming apart or no, justice would have its place.

  By the time she was at the highest point she could climb, the group of renegade warriors had passed by going south, then returned, riding slower, looking carefully over every inch of sandy ground to either side of the roadway. For all their vile faults, they were excellent trackers, and in short order she knew they would find where she had leapt from her horse. Not long after, they would guess that the sheltering rock pile was the only reasonable place for her to hide.

  Ellonlef studied her surroundings, gauging her defenses. She stood in a wind-hollowed basin of stone with a sandy floor. Behind her, a sheer sandstone face rose up a dozen feet. To either side, boulders fell away in twenty-foot drops. To the front, the haphazard path she had taken would help funnel them into a single line. A grim smile turned her lips. They would be cautious, for she had already thinned their numbers-and that while firing arrows from the back of a galloping horse. Cautious or not, they would come, but she would be ready.

  She counted her arrows out, stabbing each one into the thin layer of sand between her feet. In the end she had only eleven arrows and the broken one. This last she tossed aside.

  Down below, one of the Bashye gave an excited call in an unmistakable Falsethian lilt, indicating that he had found her trail. Settling down to rest her knee, Ellonlef watched to see what they would do, unconsciously loosening her dagger in its sheath. All of her actions were second nature, for the Sisters of Najihar were trained in everything from history to healing to battle. Even after nine years of being locked away in the relative safety of Krevar, the warrior training she had received was still with her. To be sure, she was not as polished as she had once been, but she was far from helpless.

  The Bashye gathered together, and Ellonlef’s heart fell. Now that they were still, she counted eight of them. Two looked to be of Izutarian heritage, by their greater size; one’s accent named him the Falsethian; the rest could have been Aradaners, Tureecians, Kelrens, or a mongrel mix of all five bloods, for all she knew. Those who were of distinct bloodlines had, at some point, proven both their ruthlessness in battle in
order to gain acceptance into the clans. These men, she knew, would give her no quarter.

  Heads together, they spoke quietly, all pointing in different directions, but deferring to the shortest man among them. He alone seemed to be gazing straight at her place of refuge.

  Ellonlef weighed her options, and quickly decided on a course of action that would force them to react to her, rather than the other way around. Moving slowly, so as to attract no undue attention, she plucked up an arrow and nocked it the bowstring. Taking account of her higher elevation, she drew back the string and lowered her aim. Although she knew they would not show her mercy, she hesitated, fighting against what she knew she should do, and the natural abhorrence she felt for killing someone who was simply standing about talking.

  They are talking about how best to capture you, a voice warned, and what depraved, brutal pleasures they will take with your flesh afterwards.

  Still she hesitated.

  The few people who had ever escaped from Bashye camps always told similar tales of their enslavement. Straight away, men and women alike were stripped naked, then collared and leashed like dogs, with only enough rope to allow them to gain their hands and knees. After their tormentors broke their will, the women became breeders, while the men were castrated and forced into whatever labors the Bashye needed. Enslavement in the hands of the Bashye usually lasted only a short time before death or madness took the slave. As adept at taking slaves as the Bashye were, there was no reason to spare them or keep them hale.

  Ellonlef imagined herself raped by numerous men, day after day, until she became pregnant, saw herself giving birth to a child that would be taken from her as soon as it was weaned, and then taught to hate her and all peoples save for the clans. She imagined that cycle repeating, for years on end, her health diminishing with each successive birth, until she was nothing but a wasted sack of bones. In the end, her reward would be abandonment out on the Kaliayth, where the sun would scorch away the last of her life, leaving a corpse barely fit to feed vultures….

  Despite all this, Ellonlef still resisted, hoping these monstrous men would decide she was not worth their effort and ride away. But that was not to be.

  The apparent leader of the Bashye raised his hand for silence, then began pointing out the routes he wanted his men to take in order to secure the hill of broken stone to prevent her escape. He was only a dark shadow against the lighter-hued sandy roadway, but when he looked up, Ellonlef imagined she could see his cruel, cunning eyes. He would lay claim to her first, ravish her in front of his men, then let them have a turn-

  The bowstring made an insignificant popping sound when it slipped off her fingers. Invisible in the night, the arrow sped on its deadly course and struck the man in the throat-at least, Ellonlef thought it did, given the abrupt gagging noises. Six of the remaining seven men scattered. The seventh moved to his prostrate leader and tried to drag him to safety. Ellonlef’s second arrow took him in the back, high up on the left side. He shrieked and fell to the ground, scrabbled a few feet like a dying beetle, then went still.

  Now there are six, came her grim thought.

  For long moments all was quiet, save a sigh of wind carrying the stench of smoke from the burning Qaharadin. In the heavens, a shower of falling stars briefly flared and then were gone. A sudden hail of hissing arrows forced Ellonlef to dive to the ground and cover her head. None of the bolts harmed her, though a few bounced around and fell close by. She was about to praise her choice of a defensive potion, when she heard the soft but unmistakable sounds of leather-soled sandals scraping over stone somewhere down below her. She crawled forward, keeping her head down until she could peer back the way she had come.

  Prickly sweat sprang from her skin at the sight of three men rapidly working their way up the tumble of weathered stone. Even as she thought to raise her bow, they halted and began firing arrows at the only place she could be. Dismay filled her when the three remaining men sprinted across the roadway and scaled the rocks under the cover of their comrades’ barrage of arrows. In short order, the second group rushed past their brethren. As the former group had done, the second trio halted a third of the way up and fired more arrows her way. In a practiced tactic, the trailing group again climbed past the firing group, effectively scrambling over half the height of the outcrop.

  Desperate to slow them, Ellonlef raised up and fired off two arrows of her own. Neither struck their mark, but gave her assailants pause. After firing another pair of arrows, she ducked back behind cover.

  She thought the situation could not get worse, but then she heard a harsh rasping noise, like steel scraping over stone. Suddenly a fire-arrow whooshed up and up, before falling back. It landed harmlessly behind her, but the dancing flames reflecting off the face of stone, the same that she had counted on to defend her back, now acted as a dull mirror, increasing the small flickering light and casting it in all directions.

  She popped up with a pained wheeze and managed to launch another arrow before they pinpointed where she was, but again her shot flew wide of the mark. Someone shouted a mocking insult, even as arrows began streaking toward her. All at once, the funnel of stone she had planned to use to her advantage became a deathtrap.

  Ellonlef drew back, hissing each time her weight fell on her bad knee. Eyes locked on the notch between two boulders, she kicked sand on the fire-arrow. Almost at once another cut a flaring streak across the darkness, then another, and another. Some flew wide, disappearing over the back side of the outcrop, but enough fell close by, illuminating the entire area.

  The men were so close now she could hear them breathing with the effort of their climb. She swallowed dryly as her palm brushed the hilt of her dagger. With enemy arrows laying all around, she had plenty to ward off her enemies until the very end, even if doing to do so would ensure her death.

  A cynical, despairing chuckle climbed her throat and rolled over her tongue. If she waited for them to take her, a fate worse than death was certain. Her only choice seemed be a quick death or a prolonged one. She chose the former, and wrenched her dagger free of the leather sheath … then abruptly slid it back. It will be easier for me to empty my veins if I am already dying, she thought.

  Despite the demise of the Three, she prayed to their spirits for strength, then she prayed to Pa’amadin as well, he who had created All and then set his creation adrift, leaving it to fend for itself. Lastly, and with the least conviction, she prayed for miraculous strength and cunning, for she did not want to die here, on the edge of a wasteland so far from home.

  As if in answer to her silent appeal, a reckless idea formed in her mind.

  As more arrows rained down around her, she calmly collected up a double handful and placed them into the quiver on her right hip. With a last calming breath, she stepped forward, placing herself into the stony breech. Her first arrow slammed through a startled man’s eye socket, not ten feet away. He was the Falsethian warrior, marked out by his colorful robes. The other Bashye roared in fury. An arrow hissed by Ellonlef’s ear, tugging her loose hair. Another sliced through her robes, scoring her ribs. She did not flinch or falter, for though she was riding the wings of certain death-and perhaps because of that knowledge-she felt completely calm. She drew another arrow and fired. In her heart, she knew it would be her last. Her idea, that perhaps granted to her by the gods, was as simple as it was stark: force them to kill her, before she had to kill herself.

  Chapter 20

  “Look,” Hazad said, pointing southward.

  Riding half-asleep, Kian snapped his head up, instantly alert, and focused on the night-shadowed landscape ahead. For a moment, all was black, then a flaming point of light rose high, before dropping amid what looked to be a great outcrop of loose boulders. The dancing firelight showed a wind-worn bowl of stone, in the midst of which his keen eyes made out a moving figure. After a few moments, the figure rose to douse the flames. In quick succession, more flares went up, and Kian understood that someone was shooting fire-arrows in an
attempt to highlight the hiding target.

  Lacking Kian’s better eyesight, Hazad missed the figure. “Who, in the middle of the night, would be lobbing fire-arrows into a pile of rocks?” he wondered aloud.

  “Bashye would,” Kian said, “if they had someone cornered.”

  As they rode closer, Kian was startled to see that the someone was a white-robed woman, as she popped more clearly into view. She held a bow, and began launching arrows at her assailants. Distant shouts rushed up the road toward Kian and his company, even as the Bashye returned fire. The woman, surely mad with terror, never shifted her position, save to direct her aim. After a moment, the guttering firelight atop the hill of stone went out. Several more fire-arrows streaked upward and fell back to light the entire the area where the woman had chosen to make her stand, but this time she was out of sight, and the Bashye were closing.

  Delaying no longer, Kian tugged his short horse bow free of its leather case on the back of his saddle, and kicked his mount into a gallop. With practiced efficiency, he strung the bow’s thick limbs as he rode. He offered the night a hard smile when he heard the thundering of hooves behind him, and the ululating battle cries of the Asra a’Shah. It was not that he relished the idea of battle, but rather he was glad that he rushed to fight men, and not a demonic horde risen from the Thousand Hells.

  His company had ridden over half the distance to the outcrop when an arrow sailed out of the night and scored a painful cut across Kian’s forearm. Silhouetted once again by firelight, the woman in the rocks paused her renewed attack to watch for the newcomers. Kian paid her little heed, for the faintly illuminated Bashye were now scrambling for deeper cover among the boulders below her.