Paladin of Souls - Lois McMaster Bujold [51]
This prudence cost them still more of the implacably closing space between them and the Jokonan leaders. Ista put her weight in her stirrups and concentrated on urging her flagging horse up the next rise. Perhaps turning aside to capture the baggage mules would slow their pursuers. Some of them. The enemy had plenty of men to spare, it seemed. She had glimpsed the beginnings of their column; she had yet to glimpse its end.
What they were seemed plain enough. Both sides had played these evil games of raid and reprisal across the borders here for generations, the boundaries that the Chalionese Quintarians were slowly pushing back to the north. In the disputed regions, men grew up expecting to raid for a living as though it were some job of work. Sometimes the game was played by elaborate rules of etiquette, with businesslike arrangements for ransoms mixed with bizarre contests of honor. Sometimes there were no rules, and it was no game, and honor dissolved in sweaty, screaming, bloody horrors.
How desperate were their pursuers? They seemed to have dropped from the very sky. They were a province and a half away from the borders of Jokona, hustling down an obscure hill road. Fresh troops, circling to attack some target, or worn ones, running for home? If they wore the prince’s tabards, they at least were not a spontaneous gang of semibandit younger sons and ruffians out for what they could grab, but men of greater discipline bent on some larger mission. Presumably.
Atop the next rise, her horse stumbling, Ista again gained a long view of the road ahead. Liss’s rangy bay was well out in the distance, still galloping.
Ista’s heart caught. Plunging down the scrubby hillside toward Liss pelted another dozen Jokonan riders. A scouting screen of cavalry, sent before the main force, clearly. Ista’s eye tried to guess angles, distances, speeds. The Jokonans descended as if to pluck Liss from the road as a hawk snatches a squirrel from a tree branch. Liss had not seen them yet, could not possibly hear Ista if she screamed out a warning. Ferda rose in his stirrups, a look of helpless horror on his face; he whipped his mount, but could beat no more speed out of the strained animal.
Closer, closer the raiders drew—Liss looked aside at last, saw them. Surely even her great-hearted horse must be reaching the limits of its endurance . . . She flashed past the leaders. A crossbow glinted, a quarrel sped through the air. Ferda yelled in anguish, but the shot, loosed at too great a range and from the back of a heaving horse, went wide.
The patrol reached the road. Their officer gesticulated. A pair of riders split off and rode in pursuit of Liss. The rest wheeled around and bunched to a halt across the road. Waiting.
Ferda cursed, looked back, looked forward, teeth gritting; he threw back his cloak and touched his sword hilt. He cast a worried look aside at Ista, obviously trying to think how to screen her if his dwindling company attempted to burst through the new blockade. Ista followed his glance back. More and more riders were pouring over the ridge behind them, seemingly without end.
Once blood was drawn, events would spin rapidly out of control. Death would cry for death.
“Ferda!” Ista screamed. It came out a croak. “There is no way. We must halt, surrender on terms!”
“No, Royina!” His face bunched in agony. “By my oath and honor, no! We will die to defend you!”
“You will better defend me alive with your wits and self-control, Ferda!” Except they’d left the best wits and self-control in the party back along the road in a culvert. She drew a long breath, pinned a moral fear vaster than her physical terror by its neck to the ground, pushed the words past her lips. “By my command! We must halt!”
Ferda clenched his jaw, but really, it was hardly a decision anymore. The main body of Jokonans was almost on their heels, squeezing them up against the line across