“Stop here,” Penrys said, and waited for the throbbing in her wounds from riding a trot to subside.
Everyone had made it to the fork in the road. The sounds of combat were off to the east down the main road.
She scanned the near portion of the battle. It was a swirl of confusion to her mind, the Khrebesni mixed in with the soldiers.
Zandaril looked back at her, her reins clasped in his left hand.
*Got a plan?*
She shrugged. *I can’t just make them all stop. Let me try something.*
She picked out the nearest knot of fighting and zeroed in on a tribesman in the thick of it. She reached out as she had for Vladzan and stopped his heart, then found another and did the same. That knot broke apart.
*How do you tell the difference?*
With a shock, she realized Zandaril was watching through her, as he was accustomed to do while she was teaching him. Watching her cold-bloodedly killing men. No help for it now.
*By their native language. It’s all the same for the Khrebesni.*
She looked for the next knot of conflict and resumed her work.
Zandaril quietly relayed what was happening to the others.
After half an hour, her interference was clearly having an effect. The groups were separating, and the tribesmen were gathering and retreating back down the road.
Penrys twisted in her saddle and called out, “They’re coming this way. Hold your ground.”
The noise of a couple hundred men or more jogging down the road was hard to mistake. When the first of them reached the fork and saw the mounted wizards, he hissed and came to a stop.
What must we look like, all bloody?
Like survivors. We look like survivors.
She spoke to him in his own language, in a carrying voice, and made sure her chain was visible. “He’s dead. We’ve reclaimed his captives and the horde.”
He lifted a blood-stained spear and stepped forward, and the men behind him followed.
She sighed, and stopped his heart. He wavered in place for a moment before he fell.
The indrawn breaths behind her almost matched the ones in front, and all movement ceased.
Penrys gestured to the western side of the fork and the northern of the two roads. A new leader bulled his way forward and led what was left of his people around the wizards, leaving them alone on the western edge of the interrupted battle.
It’s over.
She slumped in her saddle, until Zandaril’s voice penetrated.
“Look at them.”
She lifted her head and surveyed the wizards. There was apprehension on their faces, and a brief scan showed fear and resignation. They expected her to take over from the Voice, as Veneshjug had tried to do. As she herself had done already, drawing upon them for the power she needed to fight against him. They hadn’t come with her to stop the fighting, they’d come because they feared her.
Her thoughts felt slow. Did she want to control them? She looked at their faces, her gaze passing over Zandaril’s without pausing. With this much power, she could perhaps hold Tlobsung’s force, what was left of it, use it as a better-armed horde. And twice the wizards, if she consolidated the survivors.
I could do it. But why? What for?
She shook her head silently, and restored power to the wizards with her, taking it back from her chain. While the startled wizards before her backed away, she reached to the ones who’d stayed behind with the wagons, and restored them, too, the ones who were alive. It was all she could do.
They still don’t like us much.
She smiled sardonically. “Better stay close,” she told Zandaril. “They’re not our friends.”
More noise on the road to the east resolved itself into a marching column. Zongchas trotted over to the officer in charge.
A space grew around Zandaril and her, with Dzantig the only wizard who kept his horse with them.
Zandaril leaned toward her. “Do you want to stay?”
“With them?” She tilted her head toward the wizards sidling away. “There’s nothing for us here.”
Dzantig said, “My colleagues are fools but…” He spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness.
He bowed to them from his saddle. “Thank you, brudigna, brudigdo. We would be dead now, or worse. I know this, if they don’t.”
Reaching into a saddlebag, he pulled out the half-full sack of power-stones, what was left after melting through the foot chains. He handed it to Zandaril, then turned and followed the rest of the wizards.
Penrys looked down in bemusement at the wealth in Zandaril’s hand. “On the whole, I’d rather have some of their books.”
Zandaril snorted, and stashed the sack in his saddlebag.
“Let’s go,” he said. “Not our fight any more.”
They rode at a walk east on the road, keeping to the margin to let clusters of soldiers march past headed west. No one bothered them, after one good look at the blood, and Penrys pulled the remnants of her shirt’s collar up and bent her head to let her hair obscure the chain.
After a while, they had passed the worst of the fighting—the dead on the road, and the living tended by their fellows.
When they reached the turnoff to Kunchik, Zandaril stopped, and Penrys brought her head up.
“What…?”
He looked at her patiently. “The nearest help is in Kunchik. You need a doctor, and me, I want to get these shackles off.”
She looked down and saw how he’d twisted the tied-up chains around to the outer side of his boots to keep from hitting the horse with them. It looked uncomfortable.
“Do we have to? I want nothing from these Rasesni.”
Zandaril stared at her. “What, you want to ride all the way out the Gates to Chang? That must be thirty miles or more.”
Penrys glanced at the sun, not yet very high in the sky. “It’s only mid-morning, hard as it is to believe. We can do it.” She swayed in the saddle, belying her words.
“Kunchik is much closer. What about your packs, the things you brought with you?”
She snorted. “You think they’re going to let me take Veneshjug’s books and his power-stones back with me?”
She shook her head. “There’s nothing there I can’t replace. What about you?”
“Everything I care about is back in Hing Ganau’s wagon,” he said. “Or right here.”
He looked at her speculatively for a moment, and she straightened her spine under his gaze.
“Seven hours, it is, at a walk. Less if we trot for some of it. Think you can?”
She forced herself to be honest. “I think so. Maybe. We’ll stop if we have to.”
She waved her hand in its sling at him. “Won’t make any difference to this.”
Blinking back the fog that threatened to engulf her, she added, “Oh, Zandaril, I want to. Can we?”
He clucked and turned his horse to the east, leading hers behind him. “We’ll do it, Pen-sha. We’ll sleep in our own bedrolls tonight.”
