The Shadow Isle - Katharine Kerr [130]
“Salamander!” Gerran yelled. “What in all the hells are you doing?”
Salamander tossed the stick away and started for his horse. Gerran halted the baggage train while the gerthddyn mounted up and trotted over.
“Looking for someone,” Salamander said, “to see if he needed burying. He’s been pretty much burnt, though, and a lad died with him. All I found were scorched bones.”
“That’s a sad thing, then. Friend of yours?”
“Not truly. He’s the husband of that woman I told you about, the one who was taken by the Horsekin once before. Seeing if he needed burying just seemed a decent thing to do.” Salamander sighed and looked away, his face pale, his eyes narrowed against the bright sunlight. “What’s going to be interesting, Gerran my lad, is the fate of the other farms and the village along the way. The folk there all worshiped Alshandra.”
“Interesting, indeed. Let’s go.”
The next farm they passed, some miles along, stood unburnt though deserted. Salamander rode over and searched it while the baggage train plodded on. He caught up with them again in a mile.
“Not a soul there,” he said. “Either they took their livestock and fled to the woods, or they’ve gone along with the Horsekin army.”
“As slaves?” Gerran said.
“Or as compatriots.”
“Huh. If so, they’ve got a surprise coming their way.”
“And a very unpleasant one, at that.”
The village Salamander had mentioned turned out to be a straggle of houses roughly arranged around a well. Silence lay upon it like fog—not so much as the bark of a dog or the cluck of a chicken greeted them when the baggage train pulled up in the road beside the village. Salamander dismounted and walked over to the well. When he called out a greeting, only silence answered him. He strode over to the nearest house and peered in, then turned away with a shrug.
“It’s been stripped,” Salamander called out. “No furniture, naught.”
“You’d best get back here,” Gerran called back. “We need to get moving.”
Salamander trotted back and mounted up, urging his horse up close to Gerran’s.
“Stranger and stranger,” Salamander said. “These were the people whom the ill-fated Lord Oth saved from being drawn and hanged last summer, the Alshandra worshipers among the servants in the dun. So I’d wager they went along willingly.”
“I’d agree with that. Well, if the princes have won the battle, we’ll find out soon enough.”
Gerran used this particular pause to change the positions of the escorts. He set five of them to ride rearguard, then called the rest up to ride just behind him. He sent Salamander and Clae back to ride in the middle of the line, the safest position, but kept Nicedd up to ride beside him.
“Some of the Horsekin might flee the battle and head south,” Gerran told his men. “Ride ready to fight.”
Along this particular stretch of road there was some chance of an ambush or attempt at one. Beyond the plowed fields of the last farm stood woodland, open and brushy from years of harvesting deadfall and the like, but providing some cover still. The terrain slowly rose, too, toward the northern hills just visible on the horizon. When his men unlaced their shields from the left side of their saddle peaks, Gerran tried to do the same. Reaching down made his shoulder ache, a throbbing pain that reached a little way down his back. Worse than the pain, he suddenly realized that something was gravely wrong with the wound. He’d been cut before in battle, but never before had a wound—and such a shallow one at that—felt as if it were spreading, increasing its severity with every day that passed. He got the shield free, but when he settled its weight on his left arm, the shoulder above stopped aching and flashed with honest pain. He felt the blood drain from his face, leaving it as cold as winter.
“My lord?” Nicedd. “You truly