Gara was out of the city before the guard had the chance to be summoned and set in motion to stop him. Not that they could have. But they could have inconvenienced him. Slowed him enough so that someone who could have stopped him, like Larz for instance, might have time to reach him. The entire time he slid in and out of the shadows, and hurried through the lands outside the city walls where his horse was hidden, he cursed himself for not finishing the job the Prophet had started. Damn the man anyway, hiding secret arcane talents under that facade of holiness. Nasty little trick, to create sword wounds in one's own body out of thin air. Not one Gara ever hoped to learn.
Schneider was alive. That thought kept ringing through his head. And behind that - - Arshes. Arshes. She'll run back to him. Better that he were still in the ground. Then he shook that notion back, chiding himself for shallowness and lack of honor. To wish a friend and a comrade dead for the sake of a woman was not the act of a true man. Especially when he had never had the woman in question to begin with. Better that he thank the fates that she might be happy again.
He avoided the roads, traveling well away from where prying eyes might spot a lone traveler. Not that they wouldn't know where he was heading . Not that they hadn't means, wizardly ones to send word ahead and let the garrisons along the road know that an assassin was on his way past.
He pushed the horse past its endurance and had to rest in the wee hours of the morning, hiding like a bandit in a copse of trees twenty miles out of Meta-Rikan. His first impulse was to wait the day out, secure and hidden. Sheltering night would hide his passage. It was the way of the ninja. But he feared forces from Meta-Rikan would overtake him in their zeal to stop him and he would then have to work his way through their lines. So he took to the saddle again after only a few hours rest and carefully weeded his way through the most underdeveloped lands, skirting from wood to wood. There were too many planted fields this close to the city for total anonymity. Too many small homesteads to go far without passing a road or a distant farm.
But he was good at what he did. And careful as only age and experience might make a man careful. He passed the day at a slow pace, conserving the horse's strength so that it might travel into the night. He had water and jerky to break his fast and allowed the horse an hour's grazing at the side of a stream. He dozed fitfully, trusting the animal to alert him should anything venture near. That little sleep and he was back in the saddle. He had operated on less.
Two miles to the west was the place the priests had stopped him on the road, warning him away from Meta-Rikan. He could have ridden east from there and encountered the foothills of the Eastern Range, but chose instead to hold his course. It proved to be a wise decision, for a day later he spied a small troop of riders making haste south along the trade road. He watched them from the hills until he was certain he recognized armor and riders.
He broke his cover then, riding down to intercept them on the road. Six armored men and a two of his ninja, led by an armed and frowning Arshes Nei. Her amber glare was enough to scald a man where he stood. She jabbed a finger at him and demanded.
"So you send cryptic messages now to draw me out? Have you good reason to cause me worry?"
He blinked at her in surprise. "You were worried about me?"
Her expression never wavered from stern disapproval. "That is neither here nor there. What was the meaning of the babbling your men came back with? Is there amiss in Meta-Rikan?"
"Well -- you might say that." He didn't know how else to say it, with her staring at him expectantly, with the men shifting behind her on a road touched with evening's purpling light. His fingers tightened on the reins so hard the leather bit into his palm. "He's alive, Arshes. Again."
She stared at him, not understanding -- or refusing to. Gara shook his head, his mouth gone dry, his heart hammering in his chest as if a great battle faced him. He regarded this woman higher than any other. He loved this woman. And here he sat facing her, with an explanation on his lips that would forever keep her from him.
"He's alive." He repeated it.
Her lips moved. She sat as a statue in her saddle. A statue of living flesh with a core so hot he was warmed by the mere closeness. "What do you say, Gara?" she whispered.
"Schneider came back. It shouldn't surprise us. He's done it before."
"When? Where is he?"
"I don't know. I know damned little, save what drunken babble Geo Note told me. The Prophet it seems is a cat of a different breed than we thought. He's clipped Schneider's wings -- somehow and wants a meal. The church is condemning him -- no news there -- and Yoko and he have fled the city. I do believe Larz has forces out after him."
"Did you talk with Larz? Did you demand he cease this -- pursuit?"
"Ah -- no. The Prophet circumvented that. I wouldn't advise talking sense to any of that lot just yet."
"How did you know?" Arshes shifted minutely, betraying emotion behind the facade of Thunder Empress. "What made you go to Meta-Rikan?"
"I don't know. A feeling. A gut instinct. More to do with Yoko than Schneider. He was the last thing on my mind."
"They sought to keep us from the city? From finding out?"
"It seems that way, lady."
"Then they shall pay." She hissed. "If they've harmed him in any way, I shall see them all burn."
"Arshes." Gara held out a hand. "Think a moment. We don't know the details here. We don't want to go up against Larz and his clerics and the devil knows what powers the Prophet has hidden away, without thinking it through first. We don't have the forces. Your own are scattered. Mine are mixed so thoroughly with men from Meta-Rikan that I can't muster troops without infringing on the loyalty of half my men. We need to figure out where Schneider and Yoko are. Larz was sending troops north, up the river towards Judas. Good bet there's a reason for that."
"Kall-Su has forces to spare." Arshes said. "He never let his army disperse."
"Fine. Then contact him. Tell him the situation and get him out of hibernation up there in the cold north and down here. For now, we gather what forces we know are loyal to us and we avoid Larz's troops."
She nodded, impatient and not wishing an argument, wanting to move and do something. Her fingers reached out and she touched his arm. There passed between them a private look, her eyes gone liquid and her lips trembling.
"He's really alive?"
He nodded. She shuddered, then withdrew her hand. Her back straightened with determination and the Thunder Empress was back.
Yoko felt ghastly rummaging about a dead man's belongings, but there was little help for it. As she had told Schneider, if one did not wish to stand out like a sore thumb, one dressed the part. Which in her case was disguising the fact that she was a woman. Not that she had a particular plan. She was forbidden from the logging town by verdict of Glyncara's curse. So the only option she had, after hours of boredom drove her to the decision that she had to do something, was to follow the trail to whatever logging operation it led to and see what there was to see.
She bound her breasts and donned a bloody coat pilfered off the body of a corpse. Shifting about stiffening limbs was truly an unpleasant task. She had cringed and swallowed back nausea the whole time. She knotted her hair in a bun and wrapped a bandanna about it, then pulled on a woolen cap (also taken from the dead) to cover the whole. The cap had long flaps that came down over her cheeks, covering to some degree the soft curve of feminine jaw. She thought she might have passed for a boy, if not a man grown. At least she would not be hailed as a woman from a distance and have half the loggers in the woods salivating on her heels. Why did men have to be so uncooperative and bothersome? If the world were run by women it would be such a nicer place to live.
With that surly historic thought in her head, she followed the trail west for some while before coming to an area that was newly being stripped of trees. Why they chose this area instead of any other along the trail to work their destruction, she did not know. One supposed a type of tree more vital to their profits grew here and not there. She cared not. She skirted about the operation, watching twenty or more men work in teams with great saws longer than her body. Other's had shimmied up to the heights of trees and severed limbs from the torso. Other men collected the droppings and tossed what they had no use for in a great pile of discarded wood, and loaded what they did want onto a series of waiting mule carts. Some of the carts were huge things, with wheels almost as tall as she, and beds broad enough to sleep a dozen people comfortably. A picket line of mules and heavy horse rested idly, munching contentedly at grain sacks about their noses, while the carts were loaded with lumber.
They had cleared in this site alone, perhaps twenty acres of land. She wondered how long they had been at it. With the gusto these men displayed in their work, not long, she guessed. She despaired ever being able to stop them. She hated them, and not alone for Glyncara's sake, but for the trampled nests she saw littering the ground and the silence of the wood all around the campsite, as if all the animals had fled the destruction of their home.
A man cried out warning in the distance and all the others hesitated in their work, watching as a towering forest giant fell with a thud and a billowing of debris. There were a few whistles and hoots at the achievement, then the men returned to their work. The mules and horses rolled their eyes nervously at the commotion in camp, but soon went back to their chewing. She watched them thoughtfully. There were eighteen draft animals here, waiting to haul the wagons back. Though it would surely be no mortal blow, it would be inconvenient if they were to break the picket and run away. She thought she might, if she worked at it, be able to place an urgency in their simple, equine minds, to flee to the south. It would keep them from turning up back at the logger town and being brought back into service.
It was something she could do to help, at any rate. She had to do something other than sit passively in the woods waiting for Rushie to fix matters. It was her continued existence as a human being in question, after all.
She slipped through the trees to the picket line and no one noticed her, or if they did questioned her presence. She scratched under the forelock of the first large horse in line. Its gentle eyes observed her patiently. She knew the ways of simple, animal direction. It was one of the first spells taught to those in the Holy Sword. It was a exercise in patience and concentration that when learned properly made other, more complicated spells easier. All she had to do was plant in the animal's mind a fixation on the south. A need to reaching some unknown destination that lay in that direction. A warm stable, a manger full of barley and sweet grasses. A rubdown. Anything that would drive a horse with single minded clarity to travel. It wouldn't last more than a day or so. Her compulsions were not that strong. But it would be enough to get the animals well away from here. She left the first horse with its head turned southward and its ears pricked and moved to the second. The mules were harder. Their minds more closed. They had never had the desire to please or accommodate man bred into them like horses and were less inclined to be receptive to her coaxing invasion of their small, beady brains. Twice the work with them and she was sweating and exhausted by the time she'd finished the line.
It was just a matter then of loosening the picket and drawing the line out of the halter loops. They didn't know they were free at first and she waved her hands in their faces, hissing Shoo Shoo at them to get them moving. Once the first horse realized it was free to pursue the southerly urge it bolted across the edge of the clearing, with the others following on its tail.
The loggers did look up then, and dropped their tools to rush across the camp in efforts to cut off the animals. Yoko darted into the woods, running herself, wanting well clear of the area when the band of disgruntled men gathered together to place blame. She laughed as she slipped between trees, pleased with her own hidden stealth. Gara would have been proud. She surprised herself sometimes.
She was so busy congratulating herself that she forgot to watch her step. Her foot twisted in a gully and she crashed down, grazing her leg on the jagged end of a broken limb that jutted up from the forest floor. She cried out and aborted the sound with an effort, biting her lip and squeezing her eyes tightly shut with the pain. She lay twisted, afraid to move in case she felt the grating of broken bone. Afraid to look for the same reason. Her ankle throbbed and her leg did, above the knee on the outside of her thigh. She moved a hand down to feel her thigh and her fingers encountered wet. She forced her eyes open and shifted, which movement itself brought great pain, to see the damage. There was a rent in her pants leg, and a deep gash in her flesh that bled copiously. Tears leaked from her eyes, as much from frustration as pain.
Stupid, stupid, stupid. To cripple herself hours walk from the forest edge where Rushie would expect to find her. What would he do when she wasn't there? Something equally stupid. No, no. His blunders generally came from the arrogant assurance that he was better than the rest of the world's inhabitants. He never bollixed things out of sheer clumsiness. But he would be worried about her. He was likely to go off looking for her in the most likely place, the very place she had left, assuming the loggers had somehow captured her. It was what she would do.
She wiped tears out of her eyes and pulled the cap from her head, taking the bandanna under it to wrap around her leg. There were splinters of wood in the gash, but with no water to clean it, she hesitated poking about in it just yet. Enough to staunch the bleeding.
Her ankle throbbed with each movement of the leg. She prodded it gently when she'd finished bandaging the cut and thought with some relief that it was not broken. Bruised, sprained maybe, but with a little support, she might be able to put weight on it.
There was a stout branch a few feet away and she edged towards it, using it to lever herself up. Ohhh, pain. She saw stars. Blood trickled down the inside of her lip where she bit it. She took a great breath and hobbled a step forward. The cut didn't hurt so bad as the ankle now. The ankle felt twice its normal size. Clumsily she began limping along, cursing with each step, inside her head.
Time blurred and became meaningless. She traveled with unwavering determination down the path back to the edge of the forest. It was like someone had placed an urgent need in her head. It grew dark and she hadn't even the stamina or concentration to summon a witchlight. She cried off and on, without realizing it until the tears collected in her mouth. At one point she heard the trampling of boots behind her on the trail and the raised, angry voices of men. The loggers forced to return to camp and get more draft animals.
She hastened to the side of the path, fell amidst the bramble and brush and curled up in a helpless, trembling knot not five feet from the edge of the trail, praying to the goddess that they would not notice her in the darkness. They did not. They passed her by, in a hurry to reach home and report the desertion of their equine labor. She lay there for a while after, head spinning. Then collected her courage and managed to gain her feet again.
Down the path. She had no idea how far she was from her destination. Something came out at her from the darkness. An arm grabbed her about the neck and yanked her savagely off her feet and against a hard body. Her breath left her, her vision grayed. The hands shook her and thrust her back against a tree and a blade appeared before her spinning sight. It took her a moment to recognize him, what with the cap she'd made him wear and the braid she'd put his hair in. She stared up at him and her mouth formed his name silently.
His own mouth dropped open and his eyes widened. The sword dropped between them.
"What in hell are you doing out here dressed as a man and not in the place I left you? I thought you'd been taken by those damned lumberjacks."
"By the what?" she asked hazily. He stared at her closely and his brows descended in apprehension.
"What's wrong ? Why were you limping so?"
"I fell down." She said in a tiny voice. She was so tired and the strength that had sustained her all the while to get her, deserted her now that she had found Rushie. "I cut my leg and twisted my ankle. It hurts, Rushie." She moaned and slipped down the tree to the ground. He caught her and eased her down, ripping the hat from her head and tossing it aside.
"I almost struck first, thinking you were some man from the camp." He complained. He felt along her ankle and she hissed in pain.
"I can't see well. Can you summon a witchlight?"
"I don't think so. My head's fuzzy."
"Silly girl. What's this?" His hands touched the impromptu bandage. "Still bleeding. "
"I'm sorry. I tried to help. I chased their horses away. I'm so stupid."
"You're not stupid. I don't associate with stupid people. You just have abominable luck."
He slipped his arms under her legs and back and swung her up into his arms. She whimpered at the jostling and clung to his neck. "Which way was that brook?" he muttered, tromping through the woods with her. She drifted into darkness.
Came to with pain in her leg. He was a dark shadow bending beside her. There was the thin trickling sound of water. The little brook they had found not far from the edge of the wood, almost dried up, but still spouting some water. He took off her boot, his hands gentle. But the pain was inevitable. She drew sharp breath and he apologized. His fingers probed the swollen ankle, then he took his sword and cut a few swaths of cloth from his cloak and bound it. He rinsed the bloody bandanna in the brook and swabbed at the cut.
"Yoko, are you sure you can't summon a witchlight. I could clean this better if I had something to see by."
Her head was a little clearer now. She concentrated and whispered the summoning spell.
"Illumina." A very small, unsteady light appeared before her face. It bobbed there uncertainly, casting Rushie in a wavering light. He looked up at her, blue eyes sharp and worried.
"This is deep. You'll need to try a healing on yourself when you've rested. I can clean it now, but you'll be no good unless magic hurries the closing of the wound." He picked at the edges of her trousers, trying to get to the extremity of the cut.
"I had no idea," She murmured, meaning it from her heart. " that you were such a good nurse. You surprise me."
He looked up at her, taken off guard by the statement. "These need to come off, so I can wrap it properly."
She swallowed and nodded. She lay her head back and felt his fingers working at the laces of her trousers. He slipped them off, careful of the wound and of the ankle . She shut her eyes and shivered, her legs bare to the cool night air. The cold of the water as he touched rag to wound once more was more of a shock this time. The touch of his fingers a warm after effect in its wake. She let the witch light flicker in her fall from concentration.
"Just a little longer." He urged her, soft voiced.
He lifted her knee and wrapped her thigh with more pieces cut from his fine cloak. Then let his hand linger on the skin of her leg, above the bandage.
"Don't do that again."
"What?" she asked.
"Worry me like that."
"Oh." She sighed and let the light fade. "I hadn't meant to. Really. What did you find out?"
"Nothing of great import. I had planned to go back tomorrow, but I don't know if leaving you alone is so wise."
She opened her eyes in dismay. "No. You must. I'll be all right. I won't move an inch. I promise."
"You said as much before."
"I wasn't crippled then."
"You have a point."
His fingers traced a circle in her flesh. Her eyes traveled down to them. The coat and shirt came down far enough to cover the depth of her modesty, but her thighs were naked. Her face burned in the darkness. She was happy that the witchlight had died. She shifted her leg nervously and winced at the stab of pain.
"Don't move it." He reached for his mangled cloak and covered her with it, lay down beside her and enfolded her within his arms. He was warm and solid. She felt protected and oddly unsatisfied that he did nothing more than hold her. Then the weariness overtook her finally and she fell into slumber.
She woke up to a pair of birds chattering over her head, fighting over some tasty morsel one of them had found. She was entirely comfortable, her pains forgotten, her body neatly fitted into Rushie's, one of his arms her pillow the other resting across her hips slackly. The loose strands of hair from his braid tickled her nose. She twisted her head to look at him. The insouciant superiority was washed from his face in sleep. He seemed young and innocent off all the terrible and awesome things associated to his name. It was illusion of course, but she found she hardly cared for the big things, it was the small, inconsequential ones of a more personal nature that caused her pain. She reached out and touched his cheek, tracing the fine line of bone. Black lashes flickered. His eyes slitted open and caught her in the act of admiration. She did not blush. She was too warm and comfortable to do anything but smile. He slowly blinked sleep from his eyes, regarding her with those brilliant black ringed blue pools.
The rational part of her wanted to say good morning, but that wasn't what she felt on waking to this purely physical pleasure. What she wanted to say, she could not of a sudden, express in words. What she could think of was his gentleness with her last night. His uncontrived concern. His fingers tracing patterns on her skin. She thought, selfishly, that if it weren't for the evil chasing them, that she might like him stripped of magic, forced into a humanity that he'd used to his accommodation before.
Her fingers drifted to his jaw, touched his neck where the hair was gathered into the braid. She could feel the heat of him through cloak and clothing. His chest rose and fell at a quicker rate, his hand on her hip moved up her ribcage, up the underside of her arm where he found her hand and curled his fingers about it. He brought it to his lips, breath hot on her wrist, on her palm, brushed it with his lips, then his tongue. Yoko shuddered, enraptured by that simple act, a spasm traveling her body all the way to her bandaged ankle. The twinge of pain as she stretched her toes was nothing to the sensations she was feeling.
She said something soundlessly, some incoherent whimper, and drew their twined hands towards her and kissed his knuckles. He pulled her closer, a slight shifting of bodies and kissed her temple, her cheek, her eyelids. She made a sound in the back of her throat, the best expression she had for the pleasure she felt. She made it again when she tasted his lips. The feelings were so strong in her that she pressed hard against him. Wanting more.
"Slowly, my love. Slowly." He whispered against her mouth and set the pace with his hands and his mouth, slow, languidly. Her body relaxed and she entrusted herself to Rushie.
The sound of the brook trickling nearby washed over them and moss and leaves cushioned them as he rolled over onto his back and gently pulled her atop, where his weight would not hurt her wounds. Droplets of cool water began to make a pattering sound on the leaves. They glistened on his face. She kissed them off, having no more care for the rain than she did for the rest of the world at this moment.
"Oh, Goddess, Rushie Please --" She whimpered.
He shuddered under her, clasping her hard, suddenly inside her body and trying to find his way into her soul. And her soul welcomed him, while some detached part of her rebuked her for being a fool, that he could not be trusted, that he would hurt her as soon as another pretty face caught his eye. As soon as Arshes Nei reentered his life. The rest of her ignored it, all the complications and possible betrayals and danced.