The Jewel of Turmish - Mel Odom [23]
They caught you, too?" she asked as she pushed herself into a sitting position.
The druid hesitated only a moment. "Yes."
Druz knew at once that the druid was lying. There was no way the slavers would have been able to keep up with him in the forest.
"Why did you stay?" she asked.
He turned toward her and said, "Because I agreed to let you accompany me on the hunt for the rogue wolf."
"Getting captured isn't going to get that done."
Druz struggled to keep the defeat from her voice, but it was hard. She knew what lay in store for all of them- including the druid if he wasn't as good at escaping as he evidently thought he was.
"I didn't want something to… happen to you," the druid replied.
"I'm not going to believe you're concerned about my welfare."
His green eyes regarded her dispassionately as he said, "Would you be concerned about mine?"
"No more than anyone else I don't know," Druz replied truthfully. She held up her hands, dragging the heavy chain up after them. "I wouldn't have wished this on you."
The druid nodded. "Nor I you." He paused for a moment, glancing back at the campsite, then said, "However, if something happened to you, there would be no witness to tell the man who hired you that his son had been avenged. Other hunters would be employed, and more wolves would die."
"And that's what worries you?" Druz didn't even try to keep the sarcasm from her voice.
Shifting his dark gaze back to her, the druid said, Those men would die, too. Would that concern you?"
Druz considered the possibility only for a moment. Images of other hunters getting picked off one by one in the forest filled her head.
"If you killed those men," she said, "they would put a bounty on your head."
"Yes."
Or maybe there already is one. The thought occurred to Druz in a flash. It wouldn't have been the first time a druid from the Emerald Enclave was marked for death by one of the cities of the Vilhon Reach.
She said, "I don't even know your name."
The druid was silent for a time. He shifted against the tree, uncomfortable, and said, "I am called Haarn Brightoak"
Druz shook her head. Knowing his name now, when they were both captives, somehow made the situation worse. She pushed her breath out and tried to relax.
"You should have escaped."
"I couldn't," Haarn replied.
"Because of me?"
The druid gazed at her and said, "Partly, but if I hadn't surrendered myself, these men might have tried to get away."
A chill spread across Druz's shoulders and ran down her spine. She'd heard terrible stories about druids. Some sages maintained that the druids, including members of the Emerald Enclave, were good and honest men and women whose reverence for nature clouded their judgment and made them do things that didn't fit in with civilized thinking. Others proclaimed the druids as savages, capable of torture and brutal killing.
Most of the other people tied to the slaver chain slept. Druz counted twenty-seven men, women, and children other than herself and the druid. One woman held a small child to her breast. All of the slaves looked hard-used, as if they'd been on the chain for days, perhaps even as much as a tenday. Their skin was sunburned and their clothing, common and homespun at best, hung in rags.
"Where did these people come from?" Druz asked.
"A small village somewhere close by," Haarn answered.
"You don't know where?"
"Some of the outlying villages don't have names. They learn to be autonomous, trading only occasionally with passing merchants or each other. Many of them don't see the need to pay the taxes cities like Alaghфn levy on people who only try to survive." The druid turned to her and added, "Living in such conditions, paying faceless tax agents of Lord Herengar and the Assembly of Stars, isn't much better than living in the servitude they're bound