Paladin of Souls - Lois McMaster Bujold [49]
They still looked like green blurs to Ista, though she squinted, too. She said uneasily, “What are they doing here, in this peaceful land? Are they merchant’s guards, leading a caravan? Emissaries?”
Ferda stood in his stirrups, craned his neck. “Soldiers. All soldiers.” He glanced around at his little company and touched his sword hilt. “Well, so are we.”
“Ah . . . Ferda?” said Foix after a moment. “They’re still coming.”
Ista could see his lips move as he kept count. Rank on rank, riding two or three abreast, the interlopers poured over the lip of the hill. Ista’s own count had passed thirty when dy Cabon, whose face had gone the color of lard, signed himself and looked across at her. He had to cough before he could form words. They seemed to catch on his dry lips. “Royina? I do not think we want to meet these men.”
“I am certain of it, Learned.” Her heart was starting to pound.
The column’s leaders had seen them, too. Men pointed and yelled.
Ferda dropped his arm and shouted back over his company, “Ride on!”
He led the way down the track at a brisk canter. The baggage mules resisted being towed at this speed, and slowed the men who had them in charge. Dy Cabon’s more willing mule did better at first, but it grunted with each stride at the jouncing weight it bore. So did dy Cabon. When they reached the top of the next rise, half a mile on, they could see that the Jokonan column had dispatched a squad of a double dozen riders out ahead, galloping with the clear intent of overtaking Ista’s party.
Now it was a race, and they were not fitted for it. The baggage mules might be abandoned, but what of the divine’s beast? Its nostrils were round and red, its white hair was already starting to lather at its neck and shoulder and between its hind legs, and despite dy Cabon’s kicks and shouts it kept breaking from a canter into a bone-jarring fast trot. It shook dy Cabon like a pudding; his face went from scarlet to pale green and back again. He looked close to vomiting from the exertion and terror.
If this was the raiding column it appeared—and how in five gods’ names had it appeared from the south of them, so unheralded?—Ista might cry ransom for herself and the Daughter’s men. But a divine of the fifth god would be treated as heretic and defiled—they would indeed start by cutting off dy Cabon’s thumbs. And then his tongue, and then his genitals. After that, depending on their time and ingenuity, whatever ghastly death the Quadrene soldiers could devise, or urge each other on to—hanging, impalement, something even worse. Three nights he’d dreamed of this, dy Cabon had said, each different. Ista wondered what death could possibly be more grotesque than impalement.
The country offered poor cover. The trees were small, and even if any overhung the road, she wasn’t sure they could boost the wheezing divine up one. His white robes, dirty as they were, would shine like a beacon through the leaves. They’d show up for half a mile through the scrub, as would his mule. But then they topped another rise, temporarily out of sight of their pursuers, and at the bottom of this wash . . .
She lashed her horse forward beside Ferda’s, and shouted, “The divine—he must not be taken!”
He looked back over his company and signed agreement. “Exchange horses?” he cried doubtfully.
“Not good enough,” she shouted back. She pointed ahead. “Hide him in the culvert!”
She slowed her horse, letting the others pass her, till dy Cabon’s mule labored up. Foix and Liss reined back with her.
“Dy Cabon!” she cried. “Did you ever dream about being pulled out of a culvert?”
“No, lady!” he quavered back between jounces.
“Hide you in that one, then, till they all pass over you.” Foix—Foix was in hideous danger if taken, too, if the Quadrenes should learn of his