A Time of Omens - Katharine Kerr [173]
“I am. But how did—”
“Someone told me. No time to explain. Let’s get out of here. I can’t deal with a whole pack of raiders, and they’re on their way. Rhodry, get up here with me. Yraen, take the rear guard with Carra. Otho, keep a hand on that dog’s collar, will you? I don’t want him bolting.”
As they picked their way through the broken rocks and headed downstream toward the ford, Jill pulled a little ahead. Carra could see her looking around, frowning every now and then and biting her lower lip as a person will when they’re trying to remember something. Daft though this exercise seemed, Carra could pay no attention, because they were walking straight toward the ford where Nedd and Thunder lay. She could hear Lightning whining and Otho’s reassuring whisper, and she clung to the sound as if to someone’s hand. When they reached the bodies, she turned her head away and stared across the river. Something was moving among the trees. Even in the poor light she—they all—could see the underbrush shaking at the approach of someone or something.
“Keep walking,” Jill snapped. “You have to trust me. Keep walking straight ahead.”
No one hesitated, everyone moved, striding forward even though Carra suspected that they were all waiting for the hiss of an arrow, flying them their deaths. They walked a few feet, and a few more, and on and on, until Carra suddenly realized that they should have been wading right into the water instead of walking on dry land. All around her trees towered. The men began to swear in a string of foul curses.
“By every god!” Yraen snarled. “How did you manage that?”
“None of your cursed affair, silver dagger,” Otho broke in. “We’re across, aren’t we? That’s all that matters, and I for one am not going to be flapping my lips at a dweomerwoman.”
Only then did Carra realize that the river lay behind them—far behind them, out of sight, in fact. All she could hear was the merest rustle and murmur of distant water flowing over rock.
“Our friends can wait in ambuscade all they like,” Jill remarked. “And poke around in the rocks as if they were hunting badgers, too, when the dawn rises, but we’d best be on our way.”
Carra turned for one last look back.
“Farewell, Nedd, and it aches my heart to lose you. I only wish I could build you a cairn.”
“Nicely spoken.” Rhodry laid a comforting hand on her shoulder. “But truly, I doubt me if it matters to his soul, and the gods all know that we might be seeing him in the Otherlands soon enough.”
With Jill hissing at them to hurry, they headed into the forest, picking their way along a deer track that ran east and downstream. In the middle of the line of march Carra stumbled along, shivering and exhausted, praying to the Goddess every now and then to keep the unborn baby safe, for what seemed like hours, though when they finally stopped she realized that the moon was still riding close to zenith. There in a clearing stood all their horses, their gear still intact, even Nedd’s.
“How did you…” Rhodry said.
“The Wildfolk collected them,” Jill interrupted him with a wave of her hand. “And brought them round by the other ford.”
Carra giggled, thinking she was having a jest on them.
“And how did you find us?” Rhodry went on.
“There’s no time for talk now. Listen, you’re going to have to ride as fast as these poor beasts can carry you. I can’t just take you to the city, because of the way time would run all wrong. You need to arrive straightaway, not weeks from now, you see.”
Carra didn’t see, and she was willing to wager that none of the others did, either, but oddly enough, not one question got itself asked.
“Follow the river back to the road, and then make all the speed you can,” Jill went on. “The forest peters out about ten miles north of the river, and then you come to farming country, and finally to the gwerbret’s town. I wish to all the gods that you’d been coming from the east. You’d have been safe, then—it’s settled country all the way.”
“My humble apologies, my fair sorceress.” Rhodry made